


Breathing In

by fortywinks (ballantine)



Series: A Brother In The War [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Actually This Part Is Mostly Pre-Slash Huh, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Like Glacial Slow, M/M, Slow Burn, Soldiers, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-17
Updated: 2016-10-30
Packaged: 2018-04-04 22:10:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 40,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4154817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ballantine/pseuds/fortywinks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean can still remember a time in his youth when they had to keep boxes full of fake IDs and credit card applications in the glove compartment. He remembers reciting useless rules of grammar and fake history, throwing balls in gym class and then going home to throw knives at targets.</p><p>"Just because he can literally draft people now doesn't justify how he treats us," Sam said, like some kind of conscientious fucking objector.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

I went there behind the crude but serious belief that you had to be able to look at anything, serious because I acted on it and went, crude because I didn't know, and it took the war to teach it, that you were as responsible for everything you saw as you were for everything you did.

\- Michael Herr, _Dispatches_

 

 

They have a bunch of their dead piled up out alongside what had once been Mackie's East Spring Diner, and the bodies are beginning to bloat. Earlier in the morning they posted a detail along the barricade to keep stray ghouls from scrounging for a meal before they got a chance to haul them inside. Two of the younger hunters got really into it, would call their marks out before taking potshots, loud _woohoo!s_ when they got one in the head. It was all reflective of a manic sort of cheer that makes Dean instinctively uneasy. He thinks the pair are close to losing it altogether, and he wants them shipped back to some interior camp before it happens.

Their margins in the field are too narrow for any hunters turned psycho. It isn't that uncommon; you think a guy is coping fine until you stumble across him trying to scoop out the eyes from a vampire head on the incinerator pile.

Dean still has fitful dreams about a man named Hitchens who'd been collecting and eating shed shifter skin. He was found one morning trying to skin one of the locals, just a young human kid. Hitchens went mad pretty quickly (well, mad- _der_ ). Lost a lot of weight, stopped talking. Basically started to act and smell like a walking corpse long before he actually up and died. It was probably more from consuming bad meat than anything supernatural – the doc's theory was chronic wasting disease even before they found the rotting stash in his kip. Dean didn't really care what mechanism was at work there, but he couldn't help but think that Sam would've been curious. Would've wanted to run psych evaluations and blood tests, that thoughtful clinical detachment overtaking his expression in the face of bone-chilling horrors.

Dean can take monsters, but he has problems dealing with humans. They always do the sickest shit.

He's been with the Mississippi River Delta unit for about three months, and he's pretty sure the whole region's done for. It's been a real shit detail, every night a new firestorm of spooks, freaks, and body snatchers. Some mornings he wakes back up to the sticky heat and thinks that if they want New Orleans, well, they could fucking have it. It's a morale-killer of a thought, but his spirit's been steadily ground down since his father first assigned him here and then went comms dark.

He's not bitter about it, really, but it's hard not to lose patience when every hour with this crew feels like amateur hour, just dealing with a constant stream of mistakes and stupid decisions from the local command.

Dean's known how to cover a six and track demonic signs since he was still tying Sammy's shoelaces. He grew up working with the best team in the country, his dad and Sam. Got used to it, which was his first mistake; he knows now how rare that kind of competence is, just another thing that sets his family apart from everyone else.

It doesn't make it better, or easier, knowing what he's missing, and some nights he almost thinks twice before raising his gun up to the oncoming tide. But he won't ever take that way out and he knows it, not as long as he has standing orders from his father and another letter waiting on his cot from his brother.

He'd rather be out on his own against the wraith parties in the Venetian Isles or tracking skinwalkers through the streets of Bywater, thinks he'd be safer than with this unit of green hunters at his back, but he's used to not getting what he wants.

When John Winchester, commander of the western front, assigns you somewhere, you don't fucking argue (even he's your dad _\-- especially_ if he's your dad). It's a thought Sam would and has sneered at, but that's why Sammy's safe behind the lines in California and not sleeping in the next bunk over in the barracks.

–

 

The war's been raging for as long as some fraction of mankind has been cognizant enough to fight back. Maybe someday dusty historians wearing pince-nez will pour over old translations and manuscripts and try to figure out when exactly that was, but for today it's enough to know that it's been a long fight. Old timers – established hunters like Bobby Singer who have antique book collections that would make a museum librarian cry – this is what they'd tell you: the war never had a beginning, people just woke up to it.

The big awakening went down only recently. Dean can still remember a time in his youth when they had to keep boxes full of fake IDs and credit card applications in the glove compartment. He remembers reciting useless rules of grammar and fake history, throwing balls in gym class and then going home to throw knives at targets.

Ever since, though, they've been fighting a ground war with constantly shifting fronts. Some regions are mostly under control – _safe_ , seventeen-year-old Sammy-with-hair-in-his-eyes insisted. They're monitored carefully so they stay that way. Then you have your dead zones, places so completely lost to the other side only the suicidal loner types bother going near them. Hot zones are areas recently overrun with the colonizing freaks of purgatory, and generally the longer they stay hot, the more you'd have to be a hard-hitting anti-government loon to stay. Of course, America has plenty of those, so a lot of people stay in their homes and end up suffering the consequences. Numbers from the government on deaths outside the containment regions are pretty spotty – Dean thinks it's not because they don't have estimates, but because the results are too depressing to publish.

Sam never really forgave their father for being right in the end. Dean would've thought the truth breaking out all over the country would have made it all better, would have proven to Sam that their job was _important_. But somehow it just drove him into the illusion of a safe life even deeper.

"Just because he can literally draft people now doesn't justify how he treats us," he'd said, like some kind of conscientious fucking objector. Any day now Dean expects to see a photo of Sam at one of those Stanford peace protests, doesn't know how he'll stomach it if he does.

 _Hunting's not a real war, it's like the war on drugs_ , Sam once said, all teenage bluster and sneer, _an endless battle against the inevitable_.

Dean obviously doesn't quite agree, but it's not too different than how, for him personally, the war never really had a beginning. He just woke up one night to hot flames on his face and an armful of baby brother. A dead mother and a father he could barely speak to.

 

–

 

Any hunter worth their salt knows that certain freaks are more naturally occurring than others. You can quarantine a couple of states, put up a wall of iron and silver with mandatory testing checkpoints, but in the end there's no stopping new ghosts and spirits from popping up within the free zones. And spirits? They're like some kind of fucking auto-immune disease, make a whole region more susceptible to the rest of the shit out there if not taken care of quick enough.

They come in all kinds and can happen anywhere, which is why Dean's concerned but not yet alarmed when, that morning, Connolly turns to him and says, "You hear about the shit in Cali, man?"

They're sitting underneath a sun screen, doing their pre-patrol weapons check. Connolly's got a cigarette dangling precariously from his lips, the half-inch of stacked ash threatening to fall into his lap with every word that jumps out his mouth. Dean reminds himself that California's a large fucking state and only shrugs tightly in response.

"Woman in White, in Jericho." Connolly shakes his head. Dean tracks the ash tip's quiver with his eyes, letting the barely-begun stir of his nerves settle; there's no reason Sam would be in Jericho. "What's that make, third rupture over there in a month?"

"Fourth," Dean says, unwillingly precise. "Don't forget the black dog up in Shasta."

"Fuck," Connolly says. "Exactly my point. _Black dog_. Something's coming, gonna hit those yuppies hard, just you wait."

At that moment, Dean just so happens to jostle the other man's shoulder, causing the ash to fall into the freshly oiled chamber of Connolly's rifle. While he looks down and curses, Dean snags himself a cigarette and leans back on his stool. Stretches his neck out of the shade and closes his eyes against the relentless burn of the sun overhead, the same sun that shines even now on the lawns of Stanford University and his little bitch of a brother.

–

 

Dean's been on-edge ever since his father dropped off the map. It's not worry, exactly (except in the way he always worries), because his dad, he's a one-man goddamn Lurp. It's more like an uneasiness of being left behind with all the other useless grunts.

He belongs on the road like his dad – _with_ his dad – and he's got this itch from being stationed too long in one place. Every new day that breaks, Dean feels more and more like he's been ditched and demoted, and for a guy that's a pretty much all about the job, well. It's driving him up the wall.

Fourteen-hour days out on patrol, slogging through the humidity and snapping at Kite and Ernst to _don't fucking touch that, you stupid fuck_ and _zip your goddamn flak jacket, the ward's won't work while open_. And Connolly, he just walks along their six, sunglasses down and smirk up.

Cleto Connolly, one of the last refugees out of Florida after the state was broke open with the supernatural. He's capable enough – lied about his age and signed up when he was sixteen after a werewolf took out everyone in his family except some older sister who's out in Arizona. He's had a hard but good run of it, and he doesn't give two shits about two useless shits like Kite and Ernst.

"If they bite it, it's only their own damn fault," he reasoned one day after he and Dean had let off some steam in Dean's bunk. They were lying around, smoking shirtless and covered in the sweat that never seemed to dry down here.

"And you think their stupidity won't take us down with them?"

"Naw, man," he said. He rolled over in one smooth motion and shuffled down until he was speaking directly to Dean's dick. "We're too good for that. See, when I go down, it's going to be in a blaze of glory and bullets, not because Kite smudged the fuckin' salt line."

Dean always thought that when he'd go, it'd be back-to-back with his family. He doesn't have Connolly's faith that it won't be alone and deeply pointless.

Back when they were all first militarized, Dean thought it meant the war would be over sooner, that with the back-up and access to supplies, they could stamp out the worst of it. It hasn't gone down that way.

And now his family's split, his baby's stowed in some backwater garage, and Dean's roadblocked like the mindless grunt Sam always said he'd be.

–

 

"We've been reassigned," Connolly says to him that night.

"What?" Dean looks up from the hack tape job he giving his turf toe.  
  
Connolly's moving efficiently around his bunk, rolling his shirts up and shoving them into his duffle. Over his shoulder, Dean can see Kite and Ernst doing the same thing and whispering back and forth. Something's got them excited.

"New front's opened up," Connolly continues. "No more of this routine shit, we're going to the real deal, fresh hot zone."

And Dean – Dean just knows, suddenly. With numb fingers, he digs down into his own perpetually half-packed duffle, past the old tapes he grabbed from the Impala, past the long-unused wallet and thin clip of family photos, and grabs his cell phone. He's mostly stopped checking it except every couple of days, hasn't really gotten anything in over a month –

_8 missed calls from sammy_

_1 voicemail from sammy_

And one text from an unknown number that he knew immediately had to be his dad:

_Get your brother out of California as fast as you can._

 


	2. Chapter 2

Every unit wants to be assigned to a new hot zone. Dean's more cynical than most as to why.

First and most simply, you've got the gratitude.

When a hunting party rolls up in a newly ruptured town, they're greeted like Christ returned, except with more sex and free drinks. The civilians are unused to the war except in the abstract, having been previously isolated from the worst of it. They think the hard part's over as soon as boots are on the ground and all those boots are carrying blessed P90s. So, yeah, they're real grateful and relieved at the start.

The other reason fresh hot zone is a coveted assignment, and here's where Dean gets cynical, is that it gives all the soldiers the illusion of _progress_ and _accomplishment_. It's easier to fool yourself that you're tamping the flow when it's only just starting to trickle and not a flood already up to your ankles. Give it a few months, it'll find a way to get there.

Most of these newer hunters, they signed up thinking it would be like the National fucking Guard or maybe their backwater hick militia. They never knew the hunting life from before, the one that meant you were always traveling, always fighting, no end in sight except the one where you check out of the current motel and hit the road for the next one. That's the problem with the war, Dean thinks; too many people don't realize that once you wake up, you don't get to ever go back to sleep.

 

–

 

They take a troop carrier to California. Dean would normally fetch the Impala for the drive – pop some caffeine pills and plow clear across the states, flashing his service light if a cop tries to gives him shit – but it's _Sam._ Which means Dean sucks it up and white-knuckles it for a few hours until they land.

They get into Modesto and Dean tries calling Sam again. It's the tenth time. He doesn't pick up.

Sam's voicemail message had been brief. Ragged breathing and the static of a hard wind in the background and then his little brother's voice, unsteady and thick. _She's gone, Dean. Just like mom, exactly like – god. Oh god. Dean._

The sound of his own name has been crashing around his head since New Orleans, all agony and lostlost _l_ _ost_. He wasn't bred to ignore that, not _physically capable_ of it, so soon as they're back on solid ground he waves off the call to drinks – his men acting like it's fucking spring break – and commandeers a jeep. Hauls ass to Palo Alto.

A line of heavy traffic is heading in the opposite direction all along 132, skittish types getting out early and making for Nevada. As the sun sets, the headlights all turn on and bleed together into a solid line, guiding him to Sam.

 

–

 

Dean's first stop in Palo Alto is the burnt-out shell of his brother's apartment. He spends half an hour trying not to be sick and talking to the few remaining neighbors, who are all wide-eyed with sympathy and subdued fear.

Eventually he tracks Sam down to a hotel near the university.

It's not the kind of place they ever stayed at as kids, barely recognizable as even the same species of establishment. The Westin's got a huge lobby with polished floors and counters, potted trees, and a freaking fireplace. Some weirdo in a tie and jacket asks for his luggage and acts all peeved when Dean pats his empty dusty pockets and shakes his head.

He's feeling irritable and nervous, wondering what the hell Sam's doing here and if he really could have changed this much. But when the door to the hotel room on the second floor opens, it's not his brother standing in the frame, but a thin, grey-haired man.

They blink at each other, Dean taking in the tucked polo and khakis and wondering if he should have stopped at some point to shower and change into something other than the BDUs and black shirt he's been wearing for over two days. Dean catches the hesitant look in the other man's eye and slants his mouth open to play it off –

" _Dean_."

He barely has a split second warning before he's staggering backwards, wrapped tight in two long arms with a faceful of hair. Even as Dean's saying, "Whoa, easy tiger," he's returning the embrace in equal measure. He wonders if the smoky smell coming from Sam is in his imagination, if that's why he's feeling a little lightheaded.

His whole body feels strange somehow, like that feeling you get when you eat too much, too fast after going a while without. Suddenly the very thing your body is craving makes you sick.

After a few seconds, he becomes acutely aware of the two sets of strange eyes upon them, studying them. Sam doesn't seem to care that they have spectators and plays the whole thing out uncomfortably honest, letting go of Dean in measures and staring into his eyes the whole time.

Dean can't help but look back, cataloging the differences and running down his old mental checklist from when they were kids, _any injuries? Does he look tired? When did he last eat?_

Sam finally steps away and glances back to the two people who Dean is only just now figuring out must be Jessica's parents. They look clean, neat, and quietly devastated.

"Dave, Kathy, this is my older brother, Dean. He's a... he's with the USHC."

Dave puts his arm around Kathy, not as an overt protective gesture but one that looks like an automatic response to any surprising information. Dean can't tell if they've made the link yet between Sam's last name and the head of operations for the western front -- most people are passingly familiar with John Winchester's name, if not his face -- but if they have heard of him, they give no sign.

Dean clears his throat. "I, uh, I'm sorry about your daughter."

And Dean's been hunting since he was a kid, but it never gets easier to look at the survivors, to watch a person's expression splinter apart in exposed grief.

The couple nod at him, and Dave says after a moment, almost like small talk, "We appreciate your service."

Normally Dean brushes those comments off or offers a sarcastic _glad to hear it_ , but he feels no desire to do that right now. Instead, he just turns to his brother and says, "You ready to hit the road?"

Sam shoulders a mostly-empty duffle and waves him on ahead. He waits outside in the hallway as Sam makes his good-byes, tries not to listen too closely to the exchange. By the time Sam shuts the door behind him, Kathy is crying.

They don't say anything as they leave the hotel. They garner a few looks as they make their way over the expansive shiny floor of the lobby; Sam may be wearing a hoodie and jeans, but at Dean's side his walk is pure hunter stride, and there's no hiding that.

"Where's the Impala?" Sam asks in the parking lot, betraying the slightest concern as Dean sidles up to the driver's side of the jeep. Dean's a little gratified.

"Back in Louisiana," he says. "There wasn't time to drive."

Sam absorbs that for a second, but since there's no way for him to know the extent of Dean's hatred of flying, he lets it go without further comment.

 

–

 

They get out of Palo Alto, but not very far. It's late and the adrenaline Dean's been running on for the past twenty-four hours started to abandon him the moment he got his brother back in his passenger seat. Sam doesn't argue when Dean pulls up next to a roadside motel and gets them a double.

The faint smell of cigarettes and buzzing lights make Dean pause, make him wonder for a moment how Sam must view all this after staying in places like the Westin. But Sam doesn't say anything. In fact, Sam's been mostly silent since they left the city. Now he just splashes some water on his face, strips the thin duvet off the bed nearest the bathroom, and curls up with his back to the rest of the room.

Dean takes a two-minute shower and then follows suit on the other bed. Skims two hours of sleep before Sam starts screaming.

He's over to the other bed in a single leap, shaking him and saying his name, _Sam, Sammy, wake up man_. His eyes snap open and even in the darkness Dean can see the glint of tears in the corners of his eyes. Sam twists over and buries his face in the pillow at Dean's hip, like he can't stand to look at him or the room, but before Dean can slide away to give him space, he's reaching out and grabbing his wrist. And then he just lies there, holding it and shuddering, at once closed off and desperately reaching out.   

Not knowing how else to play it, Dean settles in against the headboard.

–

 

  
The next morning, the burning urgency he felt before finding Sam has been replaced by a restless, diffuse anxiety. They need to get out of California like Dad said. Get somewhere secure and protected before thinking on their next move. So after a quick breakfast of packaged egg sandwiches from the gas station beside the motel, Dean bundles a red-eyed Sam into the car and starts driving.

They go maybe an hour down the road before Sam looks up and asks what the plan is.

"Don't have one yet," Dean says. "First thing I want to do is get you rested up. We'll take it from there – one step at a time, man."

But Sam, of course, he's already shaking his head. "I want to fight, Dean."

"Fight who?" Dean asks, unthinking.

A second later it clicks and then he's staring over at his brother, heedless of the road. "You're not serious."

Sam's staring straight ahead, his mouth set in stone, classic stubborn Sammy. Dean could sketch the lines of that expression in his sleep.

"Yeah, I am. I'm joining up."

And Dean's at a complete loss. He flexes his hands on the steering wheel, feeling like all his thoughts are coming a beat too slow to be useful.

He's been driving – not west to Modesto, towards camp, but south on 580, aiming to shoot down to I-40 and get the hell out of California, maybe drive all the way back to his car. He had one directive, part instinct and part order from his father – get Sam out.

He realizes suddenly that he'd been about to go AWOL from his unit without a second – or, hell, a _first_ – thought. Was just going to drop everything he's been doing for the past three years for a brother who's now telling him he wants to fucking _enlist_.

"I thought you'd be happy," Sam says into the silence. If his voice wasn't so cold, Dean thinks it might have sounded a little sulky. "Isn't that what you and Dad always wanted, me marching in step, singing love songs to my sawed-off?"

"Dude," Dean says. "We use P90s."

Sam flicks him a look, and it's an impatient one, edged with anger and nerves. In response Dean can only shake his head and return to looking at the road. He can feel Sam's continuing stare, though, and when he can't take it anymore, he says:

"Look – you just lost your girlfriend, man. You're underslept, underfed. You've been through hell. You sure this is what you want to do right now?"

And he feels like one heroic motherfucker for giving Sam the out, for thinking past the immediate jump in his blood that comes at the thought of having his brother on patrol with him again, his family together again. His instincts are shouting _screw it and get back to base,_ but he can't do that without making sure it's what Sam really wants.

Sam's never in his life had to think twice about anything, though.

"Yeah, I'm sure," Sam says, finally looking away. "We've got work to do."

 


	3. Chapter 3

Dean's found that civilians react to ruptures in one of two ways -- forget about fight or flight, it's all booze or cruise. You either loosen your grip on your former life enough to leave or stay and end up fucking it all to hell anyway because you're too plastered to care.

Modesto was in straight-up end of days spirits. Palo Alto had been a bit shocky, a bit empty, but it was still more or less operating normally, people going about their daily business under a fog of worry.

There was no business going on in Modesto.

Dean guns around an impromptu block party as they swing through the downtown. A few people standing around see the jeep and its distinctive markings and holler out, raising both beers and rifles in a drunken but sincere salute.

Dean notices Sam staring as they pass and says, "Hey, maybe we should stop, have a drink while the going's good." 

Sam doesn't bother responding to the offer and instead says, "Is it always like this?" At Dean's look, he gestures out the window at the trash-covered streets and clarifies, "Everyone seem pretty cheerful."

"Well, not everyone's allergic to fun like you are, Sammy," Dean says reflexively and then promptly winces. He doesn't look over to see how Sam took that one, focusing instead on a pickup going the opposite direction at about 40 miles per hour, blaring pop music as three topless people surf the open flatbed. "Besides, it's early days. They'll get a little more quiet after the freaks make their first real run at the place."

 _If only because some of them will probably be dead_ , he doesn't add.

 

–

 

It's just so goddamn _strange_ to see him there, standing out against the desaturated backdrop of Dean's life.

 

–

 

Things are more subdued back at camp. More than likely, that'd be the hangover. From the previous night, yeah, but also from what's to come. Serious action can give you a hangover that lingers for days. It'll come on before even the first round is fired, your body's way of precognizing the shit. Dean wonders if Sam can sense it at all or if it's more of a learned feeling. Wonders if he's nervous or if all that was burned away in the apartment fire, same as it was for Dad.

Dean didn't know what to expect when they went to sign Sam up – arguments and bureaucratic bullshit and cred checks, surely – but after typing his info into a laptop, the PFC behind the desk announced that the registration and assignment were already set up and waiting.

“Come again?” Dean asks.

The private's smile fades slightly. He's young, fresh-faced, obviously never been in the field. But he's bright enough that he picked up on their names immediately, and the knowledge makes him nervous. He looks uncertainly from Sam to Dean and says, “Standing orders, it – it looks like it's been on the books for a couple years.”

That sends Sam moving forward. He slaps his hand on top of the table and looms over him. “ _Years_?”

The kid shrugs helplessly. “I – it's just your basic information and a directive that you be assigned to your brother's active unit.” When neither of them respond aside from staring, he adds, “It's got Commander Winchester's signature?”

At that, Sam casts Dean an unreadable look and straightens up from the table.

Dean doesn't really get his anger, finds it bizarre. Only _Sam_ could stand in an enlistment office and get pissed for being waved past all the bullshit, like Dad smoothing things over back in the day just in case was some big insult to his college dreams. Dean rubs his eyes and exhales.

“Is... the assignment wrong?” That the kid has it in him to be so worried over something so small makes Dean almost ill. He glances once at Sam, still fuming, and says:

“No, it's right, just – put it through.”

And that's how Sam Winchester, without any official training or paperwork, becomes a member of the United States Hunt Command's 23rd Brigade Combat Team.

 

–

 

The men don't quite know what to make of Sam.

“Man,” Connolly says, standing next to Dean and looking at Sam as he introduces himself to Kite and Ernst. “The way you always described your little brother, I was expecting someone a little more, ah... _little_.”

“What're you talking about, a strong wind could push him over,” Dean says, automatic big brother rag, but it's not really true. Not anymore.

Sam's still on the slender side of things, but he's taller than Dean now. Oh, he tries not to be, follows him closely around camp, stooping his shoulders and ducking his head. Dean wants nothing more than to cuff him around the neck and pull him close like when he was too damn short and too damn shy at every new school. He doesn't know if Sam'd welcome that anymore, prickly bastard, and while he still thinks it's his god-given brotherly _right_ , he's trying to be considerate at the moment. So, you know. Hands off.

“Want the tour, Sammy?” He claps him on the shoulder.

Sam's mostly silent as Dean shows him around. He's new to the camp himself, but every one of these places is laid out the same fucking way. So he shows him the mess, the showers, the barracks, makes all the requisite cracks about jacking it before remembering that Sam probably won't be in the mood for that kind of thing at the moment. The reminder cuts his speech down real quick, and they finish the tour in silence. Wind up at the supply depot, because Sammy needs gear and uniforms.

In the dim light, Dean can't really read the expression on his face as he looks down the long table at the familiar folded piles of clothing and pack supplies (magnesium flares, flashlight for retinal checks, blessed canteens, med kit, and, of course, a metric fuckton of salt). They outfit him with a canvass bag and stuff it all inside. Later when Sam's not around, Dean will take out his sewing kit and stitch Sam's name to the tag.

Sam's visibly tired when they get back to the barracks and dump all the gear. He sits at the bed Dean gestures to, the one right next to his. After a moment of standing over him with his hand on his hips, he sits too and surveys him.

"...We done?" Sam asks after a moment.

"Not quite," Dean says and pulls the collar of his shirt down. Sam's eyebrows jump the slightest bit before he blinks and leans forward to study the tattoo on his chest. It's a standard anti-possession stamp, a pentagram in the center of a ring of flames with the letters USHC arrayed below.

Dean looks at his narrowed eyes, watches the speculation tick over to realization, and lets the shirt go. Leans back for good measure because Sam is seriously close right now, knees practically brushing his.

"Doesn't matter where you put it." Most of the others have it on their biceps, like to flex it at pretty chicks. But Dean's never needed help in that category, and hunting is so ingrained to his life that a visible reminder of what he is just seems unnecessary.

Sam doesn't say anything to that, but when they get him in the chair he tells the woman with the needle _on the chest, over the heart._

 

–

 

It does something funny to his chest, hot and a little tight, to see his brother in the same uniform. He doesn't know if it's pride or heartbreak. Funny how those feel so similar.

“Suits you,” he manages, and smiles. The smile drops when Sam flinches and looks a little grim. Right. “Hey, look.” He's about to propose getting some grub, maybe calling it a night, but he's really not liking the line of those shoulders right now, inching up to the ears like if they try real hard they can make the shirt _not_ fit perfectly. So instead what comes out is, “You want to get drunk?”

Sam blinks. “Yeah,” he says, after a second. “Yeah, alright.”

 

–

 

Sammy's such an emotional drunk. Such a handsy, touch-feely, weepy, emotional drunk. How ever did Dean forget?

The big hand petting his hair (forward with the grain, like he's a fucking cat) slips again and covers his eyes. Dean grunts a little in surprise and staggers, and the two of them nearly fall over before he rights them again, Sam hanging all over his shoulders and apologizing into the crook of his neck four times in a row, lips slurring and smashed against the skin at his pulse.

He shivers and assumes it's from the autumn night air. Things get real chilly when your freaking neck's covered in saliva from your useless lightweight of a brother.

“Evaporative cooling,” Sam mumbles into his ear.

“What the fuck _ever_ , man. Jesus, how're you this heavy? I'm assuming you still eat nothing but rabbit food.”

“Vegetables and protein,” comes the response. “And it's allllll _muscle._ ” Sam makes an ill-advised attempt to show Dean his flexed bicep, but only succeeds in spinning them in a broad circle.

Dean regains control of their momentum. “Yeah, yeah, you're big and strong, the jolly green giant. The chicks must be all over you.” He realizes what he's said before the last word's out of his mouth. “Shit, Sam, I'm sorry – ”

“They weren't, actually,” Sam interrupts, not sounding like he cared at all about Dean's apology. He's more subdued now, and the hair petting's stopped. Dean immediately regrets its loss; anything's preferable to – “I still didn't have a whole lot of luck with girls, just – just the one.” His voice cracks down the middle.

“Sam,” Dean says, and that's all he can get out. He tightens his grip on his shoulders, wishes he could wring the sorrow with the motion right out of his brother, who doesn't deserve this, any of it.

“Yeah,” Sam says. “I know.”

They make it back to the bunks in silence and fall into a beery sleep.

 

–

 

The freaks attack in the early hours of the next morning, dark and full of bird chatter.

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

Instant, total awareness. From the moment the sirens go off to when they're rolling out of camp five minutes later, Dean doesn't think, just snaps orders to his unit and shoves himself towards combat readiness. Sam's a second behind him every step of the way.

The freaks come out of the fields from the southwest and make straight for the nearest sprawling residential neighborhoods. They always come on foot. There's something primal about a mass of figures running you down, a throwback to early human warfare that still sparks something in the animal brain.

A couple buildings are on fire, which is just as likely a civilian's doing than not -- sometimes people panic. And fire's basic, _elemental_. Holds a certain fascination and power even amidst technological wonders and supernatural terrors. When in doubt, light the fucker on fire.

Their jeeps skid up to the attack zone, hunters taking shots out the open windows before they even come to a stop. About one hundred figures are struggling in the street, some already jerking erratically around like they're in the middle of a drug fit. Screams fill the air.

In the dark milling chaos, it's impossible to be completely sure which you're shooting at, the freak or the victim, but if someone's out there on the street, the awful truth is that they just might be better off with a stray bullet to the brain than being awake and torn apart limb from limb.

...That's the other side of the coin people discover quickly about the USHC, the coin that gets flipped once and stays flipped forever; their primary mission is not to save the residents of a ruptured area, but to contain the rupture.

They likely won't be getting any more free drinks after tonight.

The unit's got two new people, a man and a woman who Dean hasn't properly met yet, but that doesn't stop him from signaling them into position when they get on the ground. They spread out in an evenly spaced formation and begin moving forward.

They need to make a strong line, an impenetrable barrier between the freaks and the rest of the town at their backs.

Dean hefts his gun, aims, shoots and then watches. If luck's on their side, they'll get away using the silver plated bullets. If it's not –

"Fangs!" The woman yells from the far left, just as Dean sees the thing he shot shake it off and start forward at him.

Dean curses. They all reclip their P90s and reach for the machetes on their belt.

"Sam,” Dean calls over, “go back to the jeep, there should be a line of dead man's blood darts next to the gun."

But Sam's already got his blade out. He swings at a fang and gets it stuck half way through the neck. He jerks it out in a spray of blood and finishes the job, then turns to Dean, eyes blazing.

"You are _not_ storing me up there for safe-keeping while you're down here, Dean – "

Dean doesn't have time for this shit.

He grabs his brother by the shoulder and hauls him in close. "That's an order – you follow it or you're out. Simple as that." When Sam doesn't say anything, just stands there, chest heaving under the flickering orange of the raging fires, Dean prods, "You got that? Get. To. The gun."

With one final furious look, Sam goes.

It's as good as having a sniper, neatly measured shots offering up weakened fangs in a steady stream for their machetes. The remaining civilians on the ground have all run off – which will be a whole other headache when it comes to finding those who've turned. For the moment, the hunters get the full attention of the freaks. Dean loses himself in the closeness of it, the physicality of the dodge and swing, a near miss here and there when one too many come at him at once – but Sam's always there above, never letting him get overwhelmed for longer than a second.

All told, they finish up in just under an hour, when the sun's a watery glint on the horizon. Dean radios for a disposal unit, and they begin stacking the bodies without comment. There are some civilians mixed with the vampires. Another reason they won't be warmly regarded from here on out; people don't take too kindly to you torching the bodies of their neighbors and friends alongside those of godless monsters. But violent deaths create spooks, and there ain't no death more violent than a freak attack.

Dean's in a weirdly good mood. They're all exhausted but wired, which is always a strange combination that leaves you useless for pretty much everything. Sam's had his first mission and it went well, no injuries, no clusterfuck disasters. He counts it a win. 

"I just don't get it. What do they _want_?" Kite asks on the way back, face dripping in sweat and hands shaking as he reaches up to wipe at it. He's got a bloody gash down his face but doesn't seem to realize it yet.

"You're in the Central Valley," Sam says. Dean glances at him; he's running his fingers over his gun in quick, sure movements, post-mission check like he hasn't been away from guns for a couple years. "It's one of the main agricultural hubs in the country. You do the math."

Dean doesn't think he's wrong, exactly, but since he's not vegetable-obsessed like his brother, he also thinks there's more to it than that. Has his own theory, been thinking it over since he first heard about California.

They hit the oldest parts of the country first, and the first major losses in the war were all on the eastern seaboard – Florida to Virginia, Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire. The Mid-Atlantic states were still mostly hanging in there – highly concentrated urban areas don't go down easy – but, yeah, they lost a lot of the coast.

Dean sees it for what it is, broad view – humanity's being squeezed, pushed in from the coasts to the dark interior of the continent where their population and control can be riddled through like swiss cheese.

Well, Dean says bring it. The Midwest's always been his main hunting ground, belongs to him just as much as to the freaks.

  
–

 

When they get back to camp, stretching and groaning and blinking into the sun, Dean stows his gear and hits the showers. He's standing under a spout, head bent and wishing for something stronger than the pissy water pressure every USHC camp somehow get stuck with, when Sam comes to find him.

Dean glances to the side and then rolls his eyes. “Jesus, now? Really?”

Sam slaps his own shower on but then stands there ignoring it, too busy glaring. “You can't bench me like that again, Dean.”

Dean gathers water in his palms and sluices it back over his hair. He can practically feel Sam vibrating with irritation a few feet away. “Actually, you'll find I can do whatever the fuck I want. My unit, my decision. And you weren't _benched_ , Christ. You helped us take 'em out, would've been a hell of lot messier without you on the gun.” He eyes Sam. “If you'd just pinch off that lit fuse under your ass, you'd see I was right.” He shakes his head. “What is up with you, man?”

Sam looks away. “What are you talking about?”

“I mean this Rambo attitude, this isn't like you.”

“I signed up because I wanted to fight – not play back-up like a kid.”

And just like that, Dean's done. He turns fully to Sam, sets his stance like it's a fight and cocks his head as if Sam's still the short one. “You lost your girlfriend less than a _week ago_. No way your head or body's in the game for a full mission. There's _revenge_ and then there's _suicide_ , okay?” Sam glances down, so he ducks to meet his eyes. “Listen. Sam. I'm not benching you. I'm just giving you some time to get into fighting shape.” He shrugs, “Call it a perk of being the boss's brother.”

Sam exhales hard through his nose in what might have been a laugh. “You're not the boss. You don't even have a commission.”

“Noncom and proud, bitch. You okay?” Dean looks him over, glancing for bruises or scrapes down his body. Sam's long, tan, and lean, and has apparently been hiding some surprisingly serious muscles under his college-boy hoodies.

Sam nods. Grits his teeth and grabs his soap, agitation in every movement of his arms. He rips off the bandage on his chest.

“Hey, fuck's sake – ” Dean reaches out and stills his hand.

Sam freezes and blinks at him from under wet bangs, startled into silence. Dean takes advantage of the surprise to brush over the new tattoo on Sam's chest with the pads of his fingers. “You should be careful washing the tat, man. It's an open wound, you gotta treat it like one.”

Sam shrugs him roughly off and turns his whole body away like he can't stand being near Dean. “I _know_ that. I'm not an idiot.”

“No, just reckless.” When Sam doesn't say anything, Dean slaps his shower off and reaches for his towel. Almost leaves it at that, but he can't resist telling Sam to sleep after he's done in the shower and making it an order.

He gets a finger in response and grins all the way back to his bunk.

  
–

 

The next couple days are a little more quiet, routine patrols around the city perimeters and in the more vulnerable neighborhoods. Dean tries to adjust to the way of things and the new members of his team.

He holds on tight to Sam, needles at him to eat and sleep, prods him into socializing with the others because hunters and grunts alike are nothing if not suspicious of college-educated punks who use words like _corporeal_ and _omophagous_ to describe the freaks they hunt and kill.

Hawthorne's five foot five inches of mean with scars and a crew cut. Old school hunter who grew up not in the life but adjacent to it, family ties going back a couple generations. She keeps a record of all the cities she's fought in on the back of her flak jacket, some sick litany of places saved and (mostly) lost: _Toledo, Saginaw, Columbia, Jackson, Fayetteville, Valdosta._

Dean can't even look at the name Valdosta without feeling like he's just walked over a grave, bad vibes every time. Valdosta was a real shit storm, a 3-month siege that eventually hammered down to a hundred and fifty holed up in a school. The freaks killed nearly every man, woman, and child in the whole county, just total fucking slaughter. Hawthorne barely made it out, nearly spilled her guts between her fingers in the back seat of one of the few lucky escape vehicles, a yellow VW beetle. She's got a tattoo of the damn thing right above her elbow, contorts and kisses it for luck before every patrol.

Gene the Marine's a psych discharge from Afghanistan, but the USHC takes all kinds. They're warm and inclusive like that. He scowls a lot, doesn't like all the little ways USHC's different than the Corps, looser than the Corps, but he gets to shoot and kill things almost every day, so he puts up with it. Now, Dean's dad was a Marine, so he's got a healthy amount of respect, but Gene brushes up against one of his mental tripwires. The ability to sense when something's off has saved his life more than once, so he doesn't ignore it. Stays professional when he has to give a command and keeps a weather eye out.

Sam, Hawthorne, and Gene the Marine puts them at seven, the full complement for a patrol unit. (Command's real heavy into numerology these days.) Dean has them all run drills until he satisfied they can function cohesively in the field.  
  
–

Now Sam, he's a completely different person from when he was a kid and yet exactly the same. He'll still throw down for the same bickering fights they've had all their lives, wrinkles his nose at the food and asks for second helpings of whatever canned vegetable they're being served that meal. He sticks close to Dean even when he won't speak to him, moments when he is too caught up in depthless grief or grinding fury to get words past the muscle jump in his jaw.

And Dean, he feels haunted, like he's the only thing keeping Sam anchored to this world. Kill him off and he fears Sam would just flame out like a spook.

 


	5. Chapter 5

Sam's having a nightmare.

Well – they all have nightmares, it's just part of the life. Connolly's woken up more than once screaming in Spanish and brandishing a knife, would stick Dean like a pig if he didn't jump back quick enough.

But Sam's nightmares are different, if only because it's _Sam_ who's having them.

Dean doesn't always wake him up, sometimes hoping that the dream will shift and Sam will get a little more sleep. But more often, yeah, he ends up shaking him awake and then watching as his eyes snap open and the realizations tumble into place, one after another: it was just a dream, he's in a USHC camp, Jess really is dead. The worst of it is the moment right after, before he pulls himself together enough to function. He just lies there, staring at the ceiling, and if he does speak it's always in this deadened tone that makes Dean want to kill something.

Dean's awake and reading reports, has been since dawn. When Sam's legs jerk in his peripheral vision, he looks over and finds him with his eyes already open.

"Why did you let me fall asleep?" Sam asks.

"'Cause I'm an awesome brother," he says, tossing the report to the side. He sits up, elbows on knees, and studies him. "So what did you dream about?"

Sam doesn't move, doesn't blink. "Lollipops and candy-canes."

Dean sighs but lets it go.

They all have nightmares.

 

–

 

Things fall into a lull, and they do the standard patrols and a few milk run missions.

One day they're checking out an abandoned truck up in Riverbank, where someone called in a cold spot and some phantom force pushing people's vehicles around the road. They can smell the problem as soon as they pull up behind the truck, so the week-old corpse in the back seat doesn't come as a surprise.

Dean directs the team to clear a perimeter and prepare it for containment. The truck is parked neatly in its space and there's no sign of a struggle. It's like the woman just lied down and waited to die.

"What do you think killed her?" Kite says, standing back and looking over the whole scene curiously. He's been in the USHC three months and he still asks questions like that, still wanders and wonders, like the whole war is some role-playing game that he can figure his way through.

"The fuck does it matter," Gene grunts as he hauls a salt canister down from the jeep. "She's just a spook now."

A wind kicks up and they all lay hands on their guns.

"Enough chatter," Dean says. "Put the accelerant out so we can get a move on."

Dealing with ghosts in a group always put Dean on edge, more nervous than he ever was when it was just him and his dad digging up graveyards with the night at their back. He doesn't really have a reason for it; with more people, sure, there are more variables in play, more potential for ghost possession, but that's still pretty rare.

All he knows is that he doesn't like his team standing out exposed on this empty street, under this lying sunny sky.

Nothing happens. The woman doesn't make an appearance, and they don't have to fire off even one round. Still, the feeling lingers.

On the return to camp they come up behind a sanitation truck making the rounds in the denser neighborhoods of inner Modesto. The crew are greeted with cheers as they drive slowly down the street, picking up three weeks' worth of trash. Dean gets it; people are real appreciative of the less glamorous jobs these days. Walking down a street lined with rotting garbage and swarms of flies, the smell overriding all others, it can start to feel like the fight's already been lost.

Civilization's a funny thing. Before a rupture, you ask someone to define it and they'll give you all sorts of answers – strictures on morals, odes to consumer products, babble about things like _common decency_. Ask those people after a run of a couple bands of freaks, and the answer boils down and crystallizes: _let me live on a street that doesn't look and smell of death._

Dean's unit rolls down the street after the garbage truck, and he watches the smiles snap off when people spot them.

 

–

 

The thing about Sam is, he's _goal-oriented._ Said so right on his college application. This characteristic, so apparently highly valued in the realm of normal life, is probably what makes Sam such a pushy, whiny bitch in the realm of Dean's.

Sam gets restless.

Dean starts finding him hanging out in the communications tent, pouring over all the reports and newswires his security clearance allows him access to – which isn't necessarily very many, but if Dean knows his brother at all, he's sure that he's found a way around that. Strange how Dean isn't bothered by the thought of an intelligence breach.

He starts to get the feeling that there's something underneath all of Sam's behavior, starts to notice slight differentiations in his nightmares, how some leave him sweat-covered and with a migraine that'll last half the morning.

It all comes to a head one afternoon in the yard.

Dean's been standing off to the side, watching Hawthorne and Ernst spar and occasionally borrowing Connolly's perpetually lit cigarette for a drag or two. He's still got his lips pursed around one when Sam comes marching up clutching a sheaf of papers.

He walks straight past the others as if they aren't even there, eyes locked on Dean and only stuttering for a moment on the cigarette in his mouth. Dean curses inwardly and tosses the thing to the ground, heedless of Connolly's sideline _Hey man! That thing wasn't even half gone –_

“Did you know Dad was in California when Jess was killed?” Sam demands before even coming to a stop in front of him. “And that he left the state right after?”

“Didn't give it much thought, but I'm not surprised,” Dean says cautiously. He flicks his eyes down to the papers and back up. “What of it?”

“What of – ? Seriously, Dean? The way Jess died, the omens recorded, and now section command's last location on our _revenge-obsessed_ father was Palo Alto, and you don't think it's relevant?”

“I didn't say that.” Dean glances around at the others, who are staring. They all hastily resume their movements. He lowers his voice, “So, what? You think Dad knows something about what happened at Stanford?"

"Yeah, I do. And I think I need to track him down and figure out what that is."

Dean's eyebrows shoot up. "Uh, no, that's not how this works. We don't get to just go wherever we want to, Sam. We have an assignment here, an obligation to the unit."

“I didn't say 'we',” Sam says.

Dean huffs a weary laugh. “Yeah, I heard you, but if you think I'm letting you go off by yourself, Sammy, you're funnier than I ever gave you credit for.”

“It's _Sam._ And Dean, if this thing killed Mom and Jess, and Dad knows something, I've gotta be there. I’ve gotta _help_.”

“If he wanted our help, he'd tell us.”

This seems to just infuriate Sam even more. “I don't _care_ what he wants. You know, this whole time, I thought he was off somewhere else, that maybe he just hadn't known about – ” He stops for a moment, throat working. Dean really wishes they weren't doing this out in the open. “But now it turns out he did know, and he's keeping me in the dark.”

"Look, Sam, Dad said – "

"Dad didn't say shit, because Dad isn't here," and oh, the kid's on a roll now, all narrowed eyes and thrown-out arms and heaving chest. "And where is he, huh? I'm one of his fucking soldiers now, just like he always wanted, and my girlfriend, she – _burned on the ceiling,_ just like mom. The whole state's going to shit – so where is he?"

"I've told you before," Dean says as steadily as he can, not wanting to get pulled into the argument. "He fell out of contact a couple months back."

"And, what? That's good enough for you? You don't want to know where he is?"

"Of course I want to know, but he's given us a job to do here." That last's a small lie, but Sam doesn't know that Dad told him to get out of California, and Dean doesn't really want to go through the endless bitching and speculating that would happen if he did. He got to Sam, he has him now, that's the important part.

"That's not good enough," Sam says and walks away.

Dean shakes his head, disbelieving. Off to the side and under his breath, Connolly says _let him go, if he thinks he's got better things to do._

Oh yeah, that's the other thing; Connolly doesn't like Sam very much.

Dean kind of blames himself for that one as well; what kind of leader can't keep his team interacting at a basic functional level? He's too used to playing the intermediary between Dad and Sam, letting his brother get his way in the few instances he was able. If it hadn't been for him, Sam would've run away from Dad a lot more often and a lot earlier than he did. (And what does it say about Dean's effectiveness that Sam _did_ run away – _twice_?)

Anyway, the point is, Dean's not playing that role anymore, he can't. He's got a unit to run, and Sam's part of that unit. That means he has to take orders, which means _Dean_ needs to devote more time on the prep end of things – Sam's not opposed to following an order so long as he understands the broad reasoning behind it. That's something Dad never got, something Connolly doesn't get now.

So what if Dean gets a little less rec time, too busy pouring over maps and mission reports with his brother. He wouldn't admit it even if he was facing down a nest of Arachne, but he likes the mental workout, likes debating strategy with his brother, looking up and seeing the glint of recognition in his eyes: _there you are_ and _we're in this together._

And if Connolly just seems to get more irritated when he shows up less often to mess around and trade hand jobs, well, that's not his fucking problem as long as he still follows orders in the field.

Privately, Dean can't really blame Sam for his frustration; things just don't feel right, even if he can't put his finger on it. Whatever's at work in California is different than the other fronts. The number and concentration of freaks isn't as bad as it should be for the omens that were recorded, the omens that triggered their reassignment in the first place. Numbers don't lie and neither do swathes of cattle deaths and lightning storms, so what the fuck is going on?

Dean can't help but feel it all comes back to whatever turned Sam's life to ashes and killed Jessica.

 

–

 

Dean eventually tracks Sam down, finds him staring at his laptop in his bunk.

“Looking for some quality time with the old right hand, huh?” When Sam doesn't even roll his eyes, Dean sighs. "Are you really blaming Dad for this? I know you think he should be around or get in contact with us, but he's – "

"No, that's not," Sam stops, blows out a breath that sends his bangs flying. He shakes his head. "I know it's not Dad's fault. It's mine."

"Fuck, Sam," Dean begins, fed up, but Sam just keeps talking over him.

"I should have protected her," he says, meeting Dean's eyes squarely and not giving an inch. "Should have told her."

Dean throws his hands up. "There was nothing you could have told her that she couldn't get from the front page of the newspaper. Come on, Sam, there's no way to predict exactly where these things are going to hit, and you know it." Sam doesn't say anything, and Dean sits down, bumping his brother's shoulder with his own. "Look, shit happens. People get hurt – and yeah, it fucking sucks. But this anger? This guilt? It's going to kill you if you don't let it go. You shouldn't be blaming anyone except those evil sons of bitches."

Sam just turns his face away, jaw cocked and brow brooding. Dean stares at his profile, feeling a wave of frustration threatening to capsize him. Any moment now, he swears, he's going to snap and tackle him, try to physically shake Sam out of it.

  
–

 

He opens his eyes the next morning, and the thought is just sitting there waiting for him.

Sam is hiding something.

 


	6. Chapter 6

He's no stranger to Sam hiding things. Hell, kid's been hiding things since before he had his first wet dream (and maybe it's a little strange that Dean know exactly when that it is, but whatever).

This is the first time he finds it hard to push and demand answers; dead girlfriend's a card Dean can't really trump. He bites back the words, settles in for the long wait. If he sticks close, nothing's going to happen to Sam. It's the first promise he ever made, years ago, and maybe the only one he'll really keep.

–

Meantime, a recon team discovers an infestation of changelings up in Midpines, a small town on the edge of Yosemite. It's a high priority mission. Urgent, because unlike other attacks, they need to make sure the community remains unaware of the hunt. They have to go in undercover and take care of the freaks as quietly as possible.

Changelings are whole different level of fucked up. They get people where they're weakest, inspire paranoia like no other and break down morale about as fast as you'd expect from a monster that pretends to be your darling little snookums. There's been more than one headline-making story of a mother or father who murdered their own child in a fit of insane suspicion, more than one burn-scarred kid who's ended up an orphan after their parent kills themselves out of shame.

Dean _hates_ changelings, hates them down in his marrow.

It puts him in a bad mood, has him snapping at his team more than usual as they prepare to leave. Sam starts giving _him_ concerned looks, tries to soft-voice talk to him like he's a victim on a hunt. Sammy with the shoulder to cry on. Sammy the good listener.

Dean shrugs him off as they all briefly discuss how to handle the changelings.

"Why is this even a question?" Connolly says, striking a match and lighting his cigarette. He smokes it for a moment, handless, squinting around at them all. "Let's just torch 'em."

"We can't just 'torch them'," Sam says, and Dean, watching Connolly's shoulders twitch in irritation, wishes he would for once try not to sound so goddamn superior. "That county's been in a drought since Spring."

Connolly's mouth twists into a sneer. "Okay, thanks for the report, Samantha-with-the-weather. And now back to the relevant shit."

Sam's expression goes cold. "I'd say it's pretty relevant unless you want to be responsible for burning Yosemite to the ground."

Dean jumps in before Connolly can say anything stupid about Smoky the Bear. "This isn't up for debate – we are under strict no open fire orders anyway."

"How the fuck are we supposed to kill a bunch of Changelings without setting them on fire?" Hawthorne asks from the corner, direct and to the point. The others echo her question with nods and curses.

As Dean considers it, his eyes wander back to his brother, who he finds looking right back at him. After a moment, they start to grin, and it's like a wildfire in his veins, this kinetic synchronicity, this remembered link.

"I have an idea," he says.

–

Midpines is less a town and more a name on the map. It doesn't have a downtown, and most of the services and shops are nestled along the Central Yosemite Highway in amongst granite bluffs and towering pines. Homes are scattered here and there off narrow, unmarked side roads. It's basically a hunter's worst nightmare for a search and destroy mission.

They take three separate, non-military vehicles into the area, two Ford pickups and a middle-aged GMC Jimmy that Dean will never cop to liking.

Dean breaks them up into three teams before leaving camp, which with this unit is its own minor headache. Kite and Ernst can't go together because they'd end up dead within the hour. He didn't want to send anyone off with Gene alone because he's pushy and possibly off his rocker. And, of course, he's not going to let Sam go off with anyone other than himself.

In the end, he puts Gene with Connolly, who can handle himself and has a sort of massive disregard for the Marine Corps anyway, being an Army brat. Hawthorne goes with Kite, which leaves Ernst with him and Sam.

Dean doesn't know much about Ernst, which is probably a failing for him as unit leader, but he can't help it. Every time he tries talking to the guy, they end up just standing around in a tense silence. The kid's young, but he's not dumb like Kite, exactly; he's absent-minded, which Dean kinda hates more. Dumb can be reliable in its own way. Head-in-the-clouds just gets people killed.

Ernst carries a camera on every mission and can often be found standing on the fringes after the action, thoughtfully snapping pictures of everything from gruesome shit like the clawed-out chest of a werewolf victim to an oil slick on wet pavement. Dean doesn't _get_ him and has no desire to; he just wants him out of his war.

–

Driving a non-military vehicle, he and Sam both in civvies, it almost gets Dean feeling nostalgic and shit and within an hour on the road his mood's improved by leaps.

Jethro Tull's on the radio, piping them through hostile hills with skittering psychedelia. Sam's got a state map of California spread over his lap. He's wearing a hoodie, and it's bizarre how quickly Dean has gotten used to him in uniform.

"So what are we looking for here?" Sam says as they pass the population sign for Midpines. They've got both windows cranked down, Dean's elbow sticking out the driver's side, and Sam sitting real obvious, bolt upright and alert, as if he hadn't spent several years pretending to be a civilian.

"The Mother usually stashes the real kids underground. Out-of-the-way location so as to attract less notice."

Sam looks around at their hilly, tree-covered surroundings. "Dean, every house in this town is an out-of-the-way location. What are we supposed to do here, canvass door-to-door?"

"Uh, we sure as hell ain't gonna do _that_ ," Dean says. "People will know what's up immediately. It's not exactly a secret that USHC's in the region."

"Well, what do you propose, then?"

"They start with the most vulnerable," Ernst says from the backseat, and Dean almost jumps. He forgot the kid was back there.

He's ready to sneer, but Sam's already twisting in his seat and fixing the kid with that soulful accepting look he remembers so well from their teenage years. (Sammy with the shoulder to cry on. Sammy the good listener.)

"What do you mean, Carl?"

 _Carl._ Jesus.

"Well," Ernst says hesitantly. "The first families they target, they're almost always single mothers or people who've separated. But to know who those are, the Mother would have to be someone who with a reason to be in everyone's business."

Sam's got a thoughtful look on his face and he starts talking straight past Dean's ear to the backseat.  
Dean's willing to admit it's decent theory, but it still doesn't get them any closer to figuring out who or where the Mother is.

He cuts off the conversation, "It'll be easier to track down the kids and work backwards. There're more of them, and they usually can't pass as good as the Mother."

"I could," Ernst stops, shifting nervously in his seat. Dean eyes him skeptically in the rearview mirror, which just seems to make the fidgeting worse.

"Go on," Sam prompts, for some reason casting Dean a Category 3 bitchface. Dean irritably mouths _what?_ but gets no further response.

"I could make the rounds with my camera. You said their reflection sometimes shows their true self, right?" That last is directed at Dean. He nods grudgingly. "Well, I've got a mirror lens that might work on them."

Dean says, "And you're just going to, what? Hope no one minds you snooping around taking photos of all the little kiddies?"

Okay, he feels a little guilty when the kid deflates. He catches Sam's glare and twitches out a shrug. Alright, _alright_.

They pass a gas station, an old one that's got hand-written signs on planks of wood and a bar instead of a general store. Parked at one of the ancient round pumps is an ice cream truck, tall, boxy, and multi-colored. Dean unconsciously slows the car.

When he glances over, Sam's already looking at it, mouth quirked and considering.

–

Dean should feel like a bit of a creep, rolling through town in a white van giving small children ice cream under false pretenses, but the kids will never know the difference and it's not like they're drugging the ice cream or anything.

Besides, seeing Sam standing at the window in an apron and perky folded hat with his head ducked to fit under the van ceiling could never not be worth it.

"Ease up, Nancy Drew," he says after Sam finally hands over a Klondike bar after giving the kid a hard searching stare. "You're gonna scare them."

"Dean, I don't think you're taking this seriously." Sam casts a cold eye over the gaggle of fidgeting children. "Any one of them could be it."

Dean shakes his head. Changelings are predictable because they have this uncanny valley simplistic understanding of kids and obsessively stick to it. In their hive mind, every child calls their mother _mommy_ and wants nothing more than to constantly play and eat sweets. If Dean had any doubts as to the freaks' opinion of humanity, murder and mayhem aside, changelings' soulless caricatures would remove them.

"Dude, trust me, you'll know one when you see it. They're like pod people minus the subtlety. We see a kid acting strange, we get Ernst to confirm with his camera. Easy as pie." Mm, pie. He hasn't had any in what feels like forever.

He helps himself to some ice cream, loading a perfectly spherical scoop of strawberry onto a wafer cone, and eats it while watching Sam play the most awkward and grim ice cream man in the history of the business.

"How come I have to do all the work?" Sam demands finally, casting him a scowl.

Dean gives a leisurely lick and shrugs. "Hey, I'm handling the cash. Can't do both, it's unsanitary."

Sam looks over again, glancing at his mouth and away. His ears are red. Dean wonders if he has ice cream on his face and wipes it with the back of his hand.

" _Dean_ ," Sam says suddenly, voice tense and eyes trained out, and Dean straightens up, all thoughts about jokes and ice cream forgotten.

A small boy is standing about ten feet from the shrinking line of kids, looking straight at them. Everything from his face to the way he's holding himself is unnaturally still, his arms held stiff at his sides and expression empty.  

"Yeah," Dean says. He pounds a fist on the panel separating them from the front of the van. "Ernst?"

"Hold on," comes the call. He can hear him shifting in the seat and fumbling with his camera and then: " _Christ_ \-- yeah, it's definitely one of them."

Dean nods. "Okay, that's our cue to close up shop." He sticks his head out the window and calls down, "Sorry kids, we're out of ice cream," and slides the glass shut, ignoring the chorus of groans and complaints from below.

The children start to scatter, some on foot, some by bike. Through the small milling crowd, they watch the freak stand by, blank-faced and unmoving. When it finally turns to go, they follow it, on foot and out of sight.

 


	7. Chapter 7

It's a California bungalow with dark wood siding that looks like it might be original to the house. The eaves cast the porch and windows all in shadow, making it hard to track the changeling's movements after it first enters.

The three of them are crouched down behind an unkept and prickly hedgerow. Sam's got the binoculars, keeping an eye on the house as Dean and Ernst assemble the short range flamethrowers.

(“I thought with the government footing the bill we didn't have to go the DIY route anymore,” Sam said before the mission. “Why not use the sniper rifle?”

Dean tossed another a gas canister into the bag. “That's for the Mother, once we've got her singled out. The kids are more erratic and move faster. We'll want to get in close-range.” He slapped a roll of tape to Sam's chest. “Come on, you used to love arts and crafts.”)

“I've got movement on the west side of the house,” Sam says. Dean stretches the last bit of tape over a canister and pauses. “It must be the kid's mother, the real one.”

Dean glances up. “She look okay?”

“Nervous. But still walking, which I'm taking as a good sign. Do you think she knows?”

Dean raises his head slightly to peer through the branches at the woman. She's wearing a flannel and hiking boots, her hair swept up into a pony tail and a backpack slung over her shoulders. He can just make it out when she calls out back to the house:

“One minute, honey. I'm just getting the mail.”

She doesn't look like she's just getting the mail.

“We need to move in now,” Dean raps out. “Ernst, grab a flamethrower and get her out of here, then circle back around to back us up.” He hoists two canisters and tosses one to his brother. “Sam, let's go flambé us a baby freak.”

–

They enter from the back, through a sliding door off the dining room. The table is a mess, covered in an assortment of half-eaten sweets and snacks, like the changeling had tried but couldn't find anything to sate its hunger. He doesn't know how much self-awareness the young ones have.

It's dim, all the windows blinded and too quiet, even with the faint noise of cartoons drifting in from the other room. Dean lifts his weapon, checks all the angles, and signals Sam to move forward.

“You're not my mommy,” a high, petulant voice says. The thing steps out behind the fridge and stares at them, incurious and unmoving. It cocks its head, and some other intelligence crawls forward and looks out at them from behind those large brown eyes. “Where's my mommy? Where is she?”

Dean grits his teeth and pulls the trigger, sending a spout of a flame at the creature. It ducks and throws itself under the table. Dean backs up and circles, trying to keep eyes on it, but somehow in the next second, moving too fast to see, it's on Sam.

Another burst of flame as Sam tries to light up before he staggers back with it clawing at his face and neck, mouth and eyes having given up all pretense of humanity. Sam's flamethrower goes bouncing and skids clear across the linoleum. Dean curses and shouts at Sam to get some distance.

Ernst appears in the doorway, panting heavily. He takes one look around and fumbles with his own canister.

Sam manages to push the thing away for second before it shoves with superhuman strength and sends him crashing through the air. Later, Dean will probably laugh at the image Sam makes right now. David and Goliath and true to story, Goliath's getting his ass handed to him. Yeah, Dean's going to be _all_ _over_ that later.

But at the moment he's throwing himself on Sam and yelling at Ernst to _fire, fucking fire at it!_

He collides with his brother and rolls so he's on top, covering him from the geyser of flames. Somewhere behind them, the changeling is shrieking. The heat flares and coalesces into a sharp pain at his neck, where his stupid civilian clothes don't protect the skin.

The noise and heat cut off as if on a switch. Dean relaxes all at once, his straining muscles going liquid and heavy.

Underneath him, Sam groans. “Get off me.”

Dean coughs lightly and rolls off, and the three of them sit for a moment and take stock. There is no sign of the changeling, like it was torched straight back to purgatory, but two chairs are broken and the wall and linoleum have a good-sized scorch mark. All in all, could have gone worse, he figures.

A gentle touch to the shell of his ear. “Dean, your neck's burnt to shit.”

Dean unthinkingly reaches up to rub the skin and then immediately regrets doing so. He grimaces but shrugs both it and his brother's worry off.

Sam doesn't let it go, getting to his feet so he can tower over him with a frown furrowing his too-large brow. “You shouldn't have jumped in, I was handling it.”

“If you're waiting for an apology, Sam, it's going to be a while.” He gestures to his neck. “This would've been your whole face.”

Sam shakes his head. “You've could have just told me to duck or cover my head. Or is it your plan to hold my hand through every mission?”

Dean's radio crackles to life and cuts short what he is sure would have been a tedious and pointless argument.

It's Hawthorne. "Hey, we got a lady in a pantsuit here, went a little postal a few minutes ago."

Dean palms the radio and smirks at Sam, who rolls his eyes. "Has to be the Mother. We just took out one of the children. She still twitchy?"

"Negative, but she's on the move, about to get into a car. Should we engage?"

Dean shakes his head. "Hold off. Put Kite on her tail her, but tell him to keep his distance. I want exact details of where's she's headed. I'm going to send Connolly and Gene your way and you three are going to go into the house and extract the real kids. They should be in the basement." The _if they're still alive_ goes unspoken.

He relays the plan to Connolly and then he, Sam, and Ernst haul ass back to the Jimmy. If they're going to take out the Mother, they're going to need the sniper rifle.

–

An hour later Kite radios that the Mother's made the rounds of seven houses throughout town, knocking on doors and chatting each time for a few minutes with the women inside. She's sniffing around for them, Dean knows, and orders everyone well out of sight.

The Mother's stolen house is so perfect, Dean thinks they would have just known it was the one they needed had they just seen it when they first entered town. It's at the bottom of one of the bluffs and earth bermed like a hobbit house. When the others went in, they didn't even need to look for a basement, just found the kids tied up in one of the spare bedrooms.

Dean sets up the rifle on the second rise overlooking the house, where he'll have a clear shot of any vehicle coming down the driveway. He lays out flat on his stomach, hands steady on the gun and eye intent on the scope. Sam acts as his spotter and lies just to the right and a little back. They don't speak except to trade observations about the wind and light and what approach she'll take when she returns.

With his vision sharply focused and his brother's voice steady and close, he nails the bitch on the first pull. Exploding bullet, center of the chest.

Conflagration on open gravel.

–

It's a rare unequivocal win. By the time they make their way down from the hillside, the others have gathered around the released children. For a time, Dean gives in to the whoops of his team, accepts the slaps on the back and the near-hysterical gratitude of the parents who've been reunited with their kids.

He's feeling light, a true _this is why we do it_ moment, which are few and far between in the war. He turns to look for Sam, automatic, and finds him gazing back from across the lawn, eyes crinkled and mouth stretched in an honest to god smile.

Looking at his white teeth and dimples and clear-eyed affection, Dean can almost imagine it's a hunt from before the awakening, when it was just them, together against the world.

–

They're off-detail the next day and so back at camp they celebrate with music and liquor and hot food.

A couple hours into it, Dean's got a good buzz going. He's standing back nursing another drink and watching Sam talk to Ernst. Of all the people to actually warm up to, of course he'd choose him. Dean should be annoyed, but he can't keep a hold of the emotion when Sam keeps glancing over at him, like he can't help but reassure himself that Dean's still there.

At some point Connolly slips up next to him and leans against the wall, shoulder a deliberate pressure against his own.

“Good hunt,” he says to Dean, gaze slanting over.

Dean tips back his beer and drains it. “Yeah,” he says. “it's nice to get a clean win now and again.”

“Seems to call for a celebration.”

Dean had noticed the heat in his gaze before, the way he had been watching keenly under heavy lids, but for the first time in weeks, the observation comes paired with an answering spark of interest. His blood's up, always is after a good hunt.

He looks back at Connolly, considering, and lets the slow simmer of arousal wash over him and show a little on his face.

Over Connolly's shoulder, Sam is leaning down to hear Ernst over the music. Hawthorne's joined the conversation and Sam is laughing, throwing his head back and exposing the long vulnerable line of his throat. He's flushed and sweating slightly, a clean warm sheen over tanned skin.

Dean looks away and nods to the door. Connolly's smirk grows and he follows Dean out close at his heels. Immediately attempts to shove him up against the shadowed side of the building.

Dean, expecting the move, pivots easily and pins the other man face-down instead. He presses up against the solid heat of his body and grins when Connolly curses a blue streak.

“This what you after?” he asks, voice calm and measured. He grinds his thickening dick against the firm curve of the man's ass.

Connolly exhales a laugh and replies a little breathlessly, “Just waiting for you to get bored of minding your brother. Man's got needs.”

Dean's grip on his arms tightens, turns bruising. His brother's right on the other side of this wall, close and safe and really _smiling_ for the first time since Stanford. Dean's feeling the drink and that edge of satisfaction works its way into his blood, making every movement feel just a little bit richer than usual.

Connolly's moving his hips against Dean in agonizing, fluid little rotations. There's a heady burn spreading through his body, and it's been so long, every slow drag up against the front of his jeans sapping the structure of his thoughts, all his attention inexorably narrowing down to one goal.

But Connolly's still fucking _talking_. “What would Sam think, anyway, if he saw this? Does he know his big brother sometimes get his rocks off with other guys?”

“Jesus, Connolly,” Dean shakes his head and steps back. The cool late fall air rushes to fill the space between their bodies, but before Connolly has a chance to bitch, Dean's got him spun around and down on his knees. He pushes into Dean's grip on the back of his head and his mouth falls open a little, looking loose, hot and wet.

Dean says, “How about you put that mouth of yours to better use.”

In his heart of hearts, Dean knows the world isn't made for these moments, but he needs them just the same. He needs times when he can be present, just exist in his body and no where else. Not out in the darkness where the evil crawls ever closer and not in the eternal periphery of his family's eye. The pleasure is fleeting, always is, but it's enough to keep him going.

It's gotta be.

 


	8. Chapter 8

Dean wakes up one night to find Sam on the floor clutching his head. He's not sure what woke him, because Sam's not making any noise. He's got his eyes squeezed shut and jaw locked tight in a pained grimace. His whole body is trembling with the restraint of keeping silent.

Dean casts a quick look about the barracks, but no one else is up or moving. He skims out of bed and crouches next to him on the floor.

The moment Dean grabs him, one hand on the back of his neck, the other gripping his shoulder, Sam's eyes shoot open and lock onto his. The hazel is blurred with tears and pain. Sam lets out a tense breath all at once and rests his forehead against Dean's collarbone. His face is burning and Dean can feel the heat and sweat against the bare skin of his chest. Slowly, his ragged breathing begins to even out.

"What's going on with you?" Dean says over his head. When Sam responds by moving away a few inches and gently pushing him off, he rocks back on his ankles and looks him over. He says in a frustrated whisper, "You have got to start talking to me, man."

In the near-dark of the barracks, Dean can just make out the halfhearted version of Sam's usual skeptical look. "Dean, you've spent our whole lives ducking 'chick flick' moments, and now you're going to tell me, what, sharing is caring?"

Dean mutters a curse and shakes his head. This is where Dean is supposed to pull out one of dad's old soldier adages, gruff strictures about stoicism and sacrifice that were meant to inspire them to shut up and keep working. But the words don't come. They had always been more for Dean than Sam anyway.

"You remember Alliance?" He asks instead, shifting around so he's sitting on the floor beside him, shoulder-to-shoulder so they can talk quiet enough to not disturb the others.

Sam looks confused at the abrupt change of subject. "You mean when we almost got ripped apart by revenants because you wanted to see Carhenge again?"

Alliance, Nebraska, around the time of the awakening. They'd ended up climbing on top one of the trilithons to escape the horde and were trapped there for six hours before the helicopters came with their firebombs. That had been one of the first skirmishes for the USHC. Dean went to sleep later that night knowing he was going to enlist. Sam apparently felt the opposite and announced his intention to leave them for Stanford not long after.

"First time didn't count, you were only five. Excuse me for wanting you to experience some of the finer things in life."

Sam just shakes his head and sighs, but goes still and pale at Dean's next words.

"You were trying to tell me something that night," he says. "And I brushed you off and then we almost died."

Sam won't meet his eyes, won't look away from picking at a hangnail. When he speaks, his voice is so quiet Dean has a hard time hearing it even from inches away. "What of it?"

"So. I always thought that, maybe if I'd just let you come out with it, talk about your plans, the blow-up with Dad wouldn't have been so bad." He watches the tension eke out of Sam's shoulders. He blinks at Dean, looking nonplussed. "Maybe we wouldn't have spent these past few years communicating through goddamn letters, is all. Maybe things would've been – different. I don't know."

It's a dumb thing, to be estranged from family in the middle of a war. Maybe once Dean would have tried to pretend he didn't need his family, or didn't care that they didn't need him, but that kind of act is stripped away pretty quickly when you might die and leave it all behind at any given moment. And maybe Dean's a little fucked in the head that he only gains that kind of clarity after becoming a grunt, but, really, he started setting his personal parameters by the measure of blood and fire long ago.

"I would've still left," Sam says eventually, looking away. "Nothing was going to change that."

"That's not my point," Dean says tiredly, but his point, whatever it had been, is already withering away in his head, like the indescribable afterimages of a dream. He just feels empty and frustrated.

It's still a couple hours before dawn, before the rest of the camp wakes up and pushes into their bubble again, and Dean just wants his brother to be all right.

"Look, just... get some sleep, okay? Can't have your raggedy ass slowing patrol down tomorrow."

Sam nods but doesn't move except to raise his head and watch Dean as he stands and stretches. Dean resists the impulse to ruffle his hair, never mind it's at the perfect height when Sam's on the floor like this, and nudges him with his foot instead.

"Come on, up-up."

Sam goes, oddly compliant, and lies on his side facing Dean with a thoughtful look on his face. Dean tugs his own sheets straight before getting in and then stares up into the darkness, willing sleep to return quickly.

"Dean?" Sam's voice, barely above a whisper.

"...What?"

"It wasn't you I was leaving. You know that, right?"

And isn't it just like Sam to think words are more real than facts, that saying makes it so, even retroactively.

"Go to sleep, Sam."

When he wakes up almost four hours later, Sam is no longer in the camp.

–

"What do you mean, he's on _leave_?" Dean stares down the PFC. "I'm his unit leader, how can he be on leave without me knowing about it?"

"I – I don't know. But I swear, he had all the permissions in order, it's right here in the system. See?" He turns his monitor around so Dean can see for himself the pretty hack and forgery job his little brother pulled. The kid wilts slightly when Dean's expression doesn't lighten.

Dean skims the screen, feeling a tension headache building at his temples. "It doesn't say where he's spending this leave." It's against protocol. "Did he mention it to you?"

The private shakes his head and Dean turns to go. "But the guys at the yard might know."

Dean pauses. "He took a Command jeep?"

"...Yes?"

And so Dean heads over to the yard to lojack his brother.

–

It's not until he's on the road himself, going ninety and passing sporadic local traffic, that Dean checks his cell and sees the voicemail. Gritting his teeth in preparation, he stabs the right buttons and puts it close to his ear to hear over the dull roar of the road.

" _Dean_ ," his brother says, and his name sounds the way it always has on his brother's tongue: half plea, half insistence, all of it possessing. " _Dean, don't freak out. I'm coming back, I just needed a couple days to sort some things out. Don't worry_." A pause and then he repeats, " _I'm coming back. And if you don't do anything rash like try and track me down, maybe I'll bring some pie with me._ " The attempt at levity falls flat long before the end of the sentence, and Sam leaves off with a soft and quick, " _...See you soon_."

There's an overturned minivan on the shoulder of the road up ahead. It has flames licking out from under the hood and and a body lying a few feet away, halfway up the rise of the ditch like the man had tried to make a run for it across the field.

Dean snaps the phone shut and tosses it onto the passenger seat. He pounds his fist on the dash hard, once, and then grips the steering wheel until his knuckles turn white.

He catches up to him on the far side of Bakersfield in the parking lot of a Valero station.

Southern California hasn't seen nearly as much action as the north, and people look askance at the sight of two USHC jeeps in the same place. Dean, slamming the door behind him, ignores the looks and stalks around to get a better look at the other vehicle.

There's an empty water bottle and a banana peel lying on top of an open map on the passenger seat. The sight is so mundane, so relaxed, it almost pisses him off more. He swipes a hand over the back of his neck, ignores the protest of the still-tender skin there, and turns to lean against the vehicle. Crosses his arms and waits.

Sam comes out of the station a few minutes later. His steps stutter slightly when he spots Dean. Surprise flits across his face before settling into an almost rueful look of resignation. He approaches and stops a few feet away.

"Look, Dean," Sam begins, spreading his hands like he's about to lay out his case, all reasonable wordplay and shit. He probably thought up the arguments while he was on the road, driving through hostile territory.

Dean punches him, a hard right cross. And when he staggers back clutching his face, he gets a hand on his collar and hauls him in close, twists and walks him back until he's pinned against the side of his jeep.

“What the fuck, Dean – ” Sam groans.

Dean leans in close until their faces are inches away, and stares his brother down. For a moment he can barely speak, barely get his thoughts in order, he's so angry.

“You know, when I came and got you from Stanford, I gave you an out,” he grits out, shaking him. He watches Sam's surprise register, like the punch was expected but whatever he hears in his voice unsettles him. And this is what Dean gets for handling Sam with kid gloves this whole time, for biting back his own angry words and just letting him expend his rage and grief at Dean unanswered. Maybe Dad's had it right this whole time, maybe he does coddle Sam too much.

“But you said you wanted to fight,” Dean continues. Sam blinks and shifts, and Dean doesn't like that, so he grips his arms harder until a flash of discomfort crosses his face. Sam's attention snaps back to his face. “You said you wanted to fight,” Dean repeats. “And you keep talking about how you don't want things to be like they were when we were kids – well congratulations, Sam, you got your wish.” Dean releases his arms but doesn't step back. “Things _are_ different. I told you, you can't just take off whenever you like. You have any idea all the things the freaks would love to do to a hunter they catch out on the road by himself?"

“I was being careful,” Sam says quietly, but his eyes are narrowed in thought, darting between Dean's eyes. “And like I said in my message – did you get it? I just had some things I needed to take care of.”

“You're going to have to do better than that,” Dean says. When Sam doesn't immediately say anything, he barks out a laugh and looks away. There are words boiling up inside him, things he knows he'll later regret  saying, but he's standing in a sunny parking lot where there's a man selling goddamn avocados out of the back of a truck, like there's nothing wrong with the world.

“You know, I was going to go AWOL for you,” Dean says. Sam's gaze snaps to him, eyes sharp. “And fuck, never mind that – I disobeyed _Dad_ for you.”

“Dean, what are you talking about?” Sam demands.

Dean rubs his mouth and then drops his hand, shrugging tensely. “He told me in no uncertain terms to get you out of California. I was supposed to pick you up and haul ass to Minnesota. Drop you off at Pastor Jim's and then return to my unit. 'Course, there was no way I was just going to leave you alone, so I thought – well." He shrugs, shakes his head. "That's it for the USHC. But then you said you wanted to stay, and I backed you.”

Sam's staring at him, mouth dropped open in complete surprise. After a second he reboots and blinks slowly, like he's starting to process the words.

“Why did Dad want me out of California?” He asks after a minute, distracted.

Of all the questions he could have asked, Dean thinks that's the dumbest. “Shit's kind of hitting the fan up there, in case you didn't notice. I figured – he wanted you safe. Same as always.”

Sam looks unconvinced, of all things. But then he appears to drop it. He straightens up and look at Dean squarely in the face. His eyes contain a nervous sort of light, but there's no hint of it in his voice when he speaks.

“Look, we need to get back on the road. My thing, it's – time sensitive. If you let me go, if – if you'll come with – I'll tell you everything. Everything I know.” He hesitates and then very deliberately steps away from his jeep and over to the passenger side of Dean's.

Something eases in Dean's chest.

He gets in the driver's side and they sit for a few moments, realigning themselves once more to each other.

Finally Dean says, “So. Where does Sam Winchester like to spend his vacations?”

Sam's drumming his fingers nervously on the armrest of the door. He says, like reciting facts from a case, “San Diego. We're looking for a blonde girl named Lily. I think she's a student at the University.”

“Okay, a college chick,” Dean says, nonplussed. “You stalking an old crush or something?”

Sam glares at him, but the expression wobbles, indistinct and transparent. There's a sick anxiety underneath, and Dean feels something cold shiver down his spine. Sam looks away again, determinedly staring out through the windshield at the passing traffic.

Dean turns in his seat, “Sam, what is it? What's wrong?”

“She's going to kill someone,” he says all in one breath.

“ _What_?”

Sam pushes forward, never mind what he's saying doesn't make a lick of sense. “We have to stop her, Dean. If we don't get there in time, she'll – someone's going to die. So we need to go, _now_.”

“Sam, I don't understand,” Dean says, blankly confused. “How exactly do you know this?”

Sam's eyes drag over to him unwillingly, and they're shining and wide, the whites showing clear around. He looks terrified and uncertain, like when he was a kid and wouldn't stop asking Dean questions like _why do we gotta move around all the time_ and _where's Dad, what's he doing_ , and _can they get us, Dean, are they going to get us?_

Now, as then, Dean stares back at his brother and just knows that everything in his world is about to get fucked.

 


	9. Chapter 9

_I have these nightmares. And, sometimes... they come true._

"Dean, say something. You're making me nervous."

Dean's not sure if speaking will do anything to calm Sam's nerves. For one of the first times he can remember, he is at a loss to say anything useful to his brother.

"What do you want me to say, Sam?"

"I don't know, man. Whatever it is going through your head right now."

He latches on to the one thing that seems tangible in this clusterfuck of a situation. "Why didn't you tell me about this – any of it?"

Sam shrugs uncomfortably and looks down at his lap. "Didn't want to believe it myself, at first."

"No, that's not what I mean," Dean presses, letting the issue grow in his mind. He's always been able to think better in-process. "I mean, after Jessica. When you knew for sure, you still kept your mouth shut. Why?"

Sam's silent for a long moment, riling Dean's frustration. He thinks Sam's going to try to duck the questions, maybe, or stonewall him with his old favorite schtick about privacy. But when Sam does speak, it's not in the combative tone he was expecting, but something a lot quieter.

"Dean, you've spent the past four years in the deep end of all this," Sam says hesitantly. "And I didn't know how you'd react to hearing your brother is – " Sam breaks off, not able to even voice his own fears or suspicions.

"You couldn't think I'd, what? Turn on you?" Dean says, confused and kind of hurting with it and pissed about the hurting all in turn.

"No, of course not," Sam says instantly. "I just, I don't know what I thought. I didn't want you to treat me any different than normal. Dean, you have to understand, I couldn't imagine anything worse than you looking at me like.... I don't know which would be worse," he says quietly after a pause. "You leaving or only staying because you're my big brother and think it's your job."

And Dean tries, but he doesn't understand what's so wrong with that last part, why that wasn't good enough for Sam. Dean's loyalty has always been a cheap thing to his family, though – so plentiful, it's practically free.

"Doesn't matter the reason," he tells his brother finally. "I'm always on your side, Sam. You're stuck with me. And we _will_ figure this all out, okay? You and me." He glances from the road to Sam, eyes wide and unblinking, willing his brother to just fucking believe him.

Sam stares back, expression blown open for a second before he swallows hard and nods.

"Okay," Dean says, turning back to focus on the road. He grips the steering wheel and takes a deep breath. Stares down his lane at the unknown coming upon them fast. "Okay."

–

San Diego has a bright unrealness to it that Dean can't quite process. All the people walk around like they don't know they're living on borrowed time. The war isn't happening here, and you would think it didn't exist at all if it wasn't for the price of salt.

"What even are these people?" Dean says as he has to brake to avoid a skateboarder in the street. The guy gives a lazy wave as they pass, not batting an eye at the USHC emblem on the side of their vehicle.

Sam snorts. "Yeah, welcome to SoCal."

"Is this what Stanford was like before the ruptures?"

Sam looks almost offended by the question. "The Bay area is nothing like this place."

Dean raises an eyebrow; Christ, at some point in the past couple years, the kid went native.

"So if all you get is a vision of the dirty deed," Dean asks as he turns a tight corner on a street lined on both sides with student cars, "how do you know she's a student at this university? You see an ID or something?"

Sam isn't paying attention, too busy studying every passing person on the street, like they might bump into the one person they need out of a population of tens of thousands in a city of over a million.

"Sam?"

Sam glances over. "What? No. I, uh, I recognized the library."

"Of course you fucking did," Dean says. "Let me guess, Spring Break?"

Sam rolls his eyes.

"You're such a geek." Dean shakes his head.

"It's actually a pretty distinctive building – look, see?"

Dean cranes his head forward through the jeep's narrow windshield. The building at the end of the block, set back on a lawn, is one of the weirdest looking things Dean's ever seen, the kind of structure that would only be built by academics: an inverted terrace of glass perched on a narrower concrete stem. Dean thinks it kind of looks like the ship from _Close Encounters of the Third Kind_.

"You're telling me that's a library?"

"Yeah," Sam says, going grim. "And at some point soon, a girl is going to drop dead on its front lawn." 

–

Walking even the short couple blocks from where they park the jeep has Dean feeling like he's some kind of exhibit. He feels like a wild animal trying to mix with the domestics. And not even a wolf in sheep's clothing; he feels like a coyote: rangy, scarred, and skittish. It almost stops him from appreciating the palette of skin bared all around him. Civilians. Are they real?

"I'm not fuckin' picnicking, Sam."

Sam looks up from where he's settled on the lawn, confused. "This isn't a – _what_?"

Dean throws himself down on the ground. He points at the bag lying at Sam's side. "There's food, there's itchy grass, and," he settles back on his elbows, "you've got a hot companion. Therefore: picnic."

Sam splutters a second. "We're sitting around in uniform and eating Funyuns, waiting for a supernatural homicide, Dean. This isn't a _picnic_."

Dean leers at two passing girls, who are eying him and Sam like they just stepped out of a military charity calendar. "Whatever you say. I've seen all the brochures, I know you college kids can't get enough of this kind of shit. Sitting on lawns all fuckin' day long. Hey, you play frisbee?"

Sam continues to look confused but shakes his head and wisely gives up on arguing with him. Dean snatches up a bag and starts snacking.

Some time between driving on campus and now, Dean decided that this whole thing was a joke. Sam's been under a lot of stress lately, and he's always been kind of a self-involved kid. He's probably been imagining this whole thing. So what's going to happen is, Dean's going to accept the leave. Lounge around in the sun for a few hours, watch the pretty co-eds. End of the day, when nothing has happened, he'll bundle his brother back into the jeep and take him back to camp. A nice little break, just him and his brother.

Sam's watching him with a wrinkled expression. Dean tosses another Funyun into his mouth and smiles widely back.

It's not all an act; he is enjoying the winter sun, which is warmer and brighter down here than up in Modesto. Still, underlying this whole daytrip is a tension of possibilities. He doesn't know what he'll do if this girl actually exists. If she's dangerous, he's prepared to put her down. He doesn't think Sam will like that.

Despite his lazy sprawl, he perks up in the same instant as Sam when a disturbance starts on the edge of the lawn. Two girls, arguing. They round the corner, one in front of the other and moving fast.

For a second Dean thinks the one chasing after must be their target, but Sam says swiftly to him, "The blonde, that's her."

The girl – Lily Baker was the name Sam pulled off the student directory. Dean's very deliberately not thinking about what it means that Sam recognized her, that he was right, that he has fucking _precog visions_ – she is walking fast, head down so her hair makes a curtain around her face, arms wrapped tight around her body. She's wearing dark long sleeves and pants, even though it has to be in the high 70s today.

"Just leave me alone," Lily shouts to the girl dogging her steps, a short-haired brunette who looks like she's at her wit's end.

"Why won't you talk to me?" She looks like she's been crying for hours, face streaked with dried tears and frustration.

Sam is already standing up, so Dean gets to his feet as well, moving slow but sure. He can feel the weight of his gun where it's tucked under his waistband at his back. He keeps his eyes on the first girl, hands hanging deceptively still at his sides. He told Sam he'd follow his lead, and he will – to a point.

"Lily, would you just – " The girl closes the distance and reaches forward to grab her, but Lily jerks away, eyes wide and panicked.

" _Don't touch me_!" Her voice climbs to a scream, and now the few other people loitering around the quad are all staring. She looks around, and when her gaze snags on Sam and Dean, standing there in full USHC garb and clearly waiting for her, her face promptly loses all color. She looks like she might faint.

They maybe should have found something other than their uniforms to wear.

"Lily Baker?" Sam says, voice calm and nonthreatening. "We'd like to sit and talk with you for a bit, if that's all right."

Lily doesn't say anything, just stares and hugs herself harder. The brunette stares as well, though with less fear and more contempt. College students, Dean thinks.

"What could you possibly have to talk to her about?" She demands, stepping closer like she is going to shield the other girl from them. Lily is so caught up in her daze that she doesn't flinch or move, so Dean steps forward and tugs the brunette away before she gets herself killed.

She jerks out of his grasp and he lets her, doesn't even react when she spits, "Get your hands off me." She looks around at them. "What the hell is going on?"

"Lily, we're not here to hurt you," Sam is saying quietly. "I know a little bit of what you're going through, and I want to help."

Dean cocks his head at that; he doesn't know what Sam is planning here. He told him he saw the two girls arguing on the lawn, and the one reached out to grab Lily's hand only to jerk like she was electrocuted and collapse. They've stopped that from happening, but Dean's unclear about what else there is to do but take care of the source problem.

Lily blinks up at Sam. Her voice is barely above a whisper and she sounds so confused. "You know? What could you know?"

"I know what happens when you touch someone."

Her face twitches a moment, another convulsion of nerves and fear. "Are you here to take me away to some USHC black site, is that it?"

"What the hell is going on?" The other girl repeats. She looks at Lily, lost. "What does he mean? What happens when you touch someone?"

At that moment Lily can't seem to look anywhere but at the other girl. She bites her lip and says, "Sarah, I'm so scared. I'm sorry, I don't know what's going on, but – "

Eyebrows furrowed, Sarah steps closer and says, "Hey, it's okay." When all three of them tense up she holds up a hand to forestall them and then slowly lowers it to Lily's covered shoulder. She searches the other's eyes for a moment and says, "Just talk to me. Whatever this is, we'll work it out. Okay?"

Dean casts a sharp eye about the lawn and says to Sam, "We need to take this elsewhere unless we want to make the news."

Sam nods. "We should have changed out of uniform." To the girls he says, "Is there somewhere we can go and talk?"

Sarah looks over at them while wrapping a careful arm around Lily's shoulders. "I know a place, yeah."

–

"A bar?" Dean says skeptically as soon as they step inside the door. He observes the surroundings and amends, "A _gay bar?_ "

Sarah, steering Lily to the booth furthest away from the bar counter, says, "We're not going anywhere alone with you. It's public or nothing." She sits down and looks at them squarely. "And we're friends with the staff here, so you better watch it."

Dean, eyebrows raised, holds his hands up and shrugs before taking a seat. If it comes to it, he's not worried about handling some soft college bar bouncers.

"Don't worry, Dean, your heterosexuality won't be imperiled just by stepping foot in here," Sam says to him. Dean flashes briefly on the last time he fucked Connolly and only smirks sarcastically in response. Let Sam think what he will.

"So Lily," Sam says, now using his soft understanding voice, the one he can put on like a pair of reading glasses. "What can you tell us about when all this started?"

Lily swallows and her hands twist together where they're recessed into the stretched sleeves of her cardigan. "I don't know how it started. It's just like – out of the blue, I noticed I was getting these little shocks when I touched people. It happened more and more frequently until – well, until one day, I reached out to pick up my cat and – " She cuts herself off, shaking her head.

"That's what happened to Leopold?" Sarah says. "Oh, Lily, I'm so sorry."

"Sorry?" Lily says, " _You're_ sorry? I killed my cat, Sarah. I'm a monster, a – "

"You didn't know," Sarah says, her voice shaky but groping for conviction. She seems like the type who's too loyal for her own good, faking confidence just so she can give the other girl comfort.

Lily looks over at her, eyes shining with unshed tears. "You should leave me. Just get as far away as you can."

"You think I'm going to up and abandon you when you're going through something like this? You supported me when my parents kicked me out." Sarah smiles and she's buying into her own act now. She found a foothold and has mistaken it for the ground. "Come on, it's like you don't even know me."

Lily looks longingly down at the other girl's hand lying on the table top. "We can't even _touch_. I don't know if this will ever go away or if I'll be able to control it."

Sarah grins and bumps her shoulder. "Hey, we'll figure it out. Even Rogue got laid sometimes." Dean doesn't get the reference, but Lily gives a small watery laugh.

Sam, smiling slightly at the two of them, asks, "So what about after that, you just stopped touching? Was there anything else that you can think of?"

Lily's faint smile fades again and she clears her throat. "Well, I still didn't know for sure, but I knew I needed to figure it out. I'm a Biochem major, I'm all about the scientific process." It's stated like a wry joke, but her voice is grim. "So I – I went and bought a mouse from the pet store." She doesn't elaborate. "That was last week. I haven't been sleeping very well since then, bad dreams, but that's about it."

"Lily," Sam asks. "When exactly did this start? Can you pinpoint it?"

She nods. "A few months ago, around Halloween."

Dean's already watching Sam's face, so he sees the exact moment he processes that information. He registers the hit and wonders what the fuck is going on that Sam and this girl both developed supernatural abilities at the same time. That kind of thing is never good.

Way the war's been going, Dean's been half expecting something big and new to rear its head. The freaks probably have all sorts of secret weapons, and he wouldn't put it past them to pull something like this, some sort of supernatural biological warfare to get them to turn on each other. Just thinking about it has Dean reeling. He wants to shove Sam back into the jeep, put the sun at their backs and drive away from this place, from this whole state.

While he's preoccupied with these thoughts, he nearly misses when Lily asks Sam, "But how did you know about me? Is the USHC tracking me, do they know what's going on?"

Dean wants to tell Sam not to say anything. Sam had wanted to be a lawyer for fuck's sake, hadn't he? Wasn't the first thing any lawyer tells you is to say nothing? These two girls don't need to know their business, it's not like they're going to be of any help.

But Sam's always been desperate to make that real connection with others, to have someone other than Dean understand him. So under Dean's watchful eye, he tells her the whole story, everything.

  
–

They drive back that evening. Dean feels better just being on the road; roads are the same everywhere and _real_ , none of that fake apple-pie life you see in places like San Diego, with its sunny, tree-lined streets that house weepy goth girls who can electrocute people.

"This was good. We stopped a woman from dying today, probably saved Lily a lifetime of guilt." Sam's relief sits uncertainly on his face, and he keeps glancing over at Dean with an uncharacteristic tentativeness. "You ever think about how we seem to do more killing than saving in this job?"

The USHC save-to-hunt ratio has been a slow drip-drip erosion at his ideals for years. When he first enlisted, he thought he was going to be a hero. Now he just accepts that he's a killer and moves on.

"You have to think of the big picture," He says. It's the standard talk he gives every soldier having a crisis. "Every freak represents a body count. We're saving people from that."

"Yeah, I know," Sam says. "It's just not quite how I remember hunting."

Dean watches him pick at a small tear in the fabric at his knee and thinks distantly that he'll have to remember to snag those from Sam later, patch them up before he makes the hole any bigger. The camp doesn't stock too many uniforms in sasquatch size.

"This was good," Sam says again. "Maybe – maybe these... visions, or whatever they are, maybe they can be a good thing."

Dean blinks and looks at him again. Sam's watching him with these soft, worried puppy dog eyes, and fuck but somehow Dean had forgotten about those. They slay him.

"Sam, it's going to be fine. We'll figure this all out." He pauses. "Just – maybe keep quiet about it around camp."

“I'm not an idiot, Dean.” But all the same, Sam tenses. "You think the others would have a problem with it?"

"I just think a little caution is in order. I mean, they're all armed soldiers trained to kill anything that falls outside the normal parameters of humanity."

"You saying I'm a freak?"

Dean's body full-on rebels at the word, the one they've been carefully avoiding this whole time, and he nearly takes them off the road. After a few seconds of careening and car horns from outspoken Southern Californian drivers, Dean gets them to the shoulder of the road and slams the jeep into park. When he turns to fully face Sam, he finds him rigid, face a mask of anger and underneath that, fear.

Dean gets a hand on him, has to at this moment. He grips the back of his neck, thumb curling up into the soft hair at his nape, and drags him forward until their foreheads are bumping over the center console. Sam's got his eyes closed and he's trying to control his breathing, but it's coming fast, causing his chest to rise and fall in unsteady, jerky little movements. Dean stares at him, studying the slope of his nose, the little mole right beside it, features that are more familiar to him than his own face.

"I'm saying you're my brother," he says, as if there hadn't been a minute-long break in the conversation. His voice comes out in a rough rasp. "You're my brother, Sam, and I'm gonna take care of you. Okay? You got that?"

Sam's breathing hitches but he slowly nods, a rough up-and-down Dean can feel against his own head.

His throat hurts for some reason. There's a strange buzzing heat building just under his skin, so he moves back a few inches. He gives Sam a little shake with the hand still on his neck. "Hey, Sam. Hey, look at me."

Sam opens his eyes and Dean tells him, fierce and unblinking, "Long as I'm around, nothing bad's going to happen to you."

"You can't promise that," Sam says, a contrarian down to his marrow, even when he's sitting there with wet, open wounds for eyes and a hand that had crept over at some point to grip his arm. "Dean, we don't know what this is, what any of it _means_ – this might not be something you can protect me from."

Dean drops his hand, tracing the line of Sam's shoulder heavily before shifting fully away.

"Yeah, well, I can try."

After a moment Sam huffs a quiet _thanks_ and moves away as well until they're both back in their own separate spaces once more.

The feeling still has its grip on Dean though, the stress and shock of the whole day, and the separation feels raw and too soon. He can't help but resent the air between them and this vehicle that was designed to reject the obvious utility of a bench seat. In the Impala, Dean would be able to drag Sam's head down to his shoulder and let him sleep there as they drove.

It somehow makes it worse, and better, when he looks over one last time at Sam and sees his thoughts mirrored there, clear and directive like any other road sign in Dean's life.

  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just couldn't resist using the line, "long as I'm around, nothing bad will happen to you." 
> 
> I think it's iconic SPN in a nutshell, a true marker of tragedy in the original sense of the term. Every time I watch Dean say it, I swear I die a little bit inside.


	10. Chapter 10

Ever since his little impromptu trip, Sam's been sticking even closer by his side than usual. It's like he's having some sort of equal and opposite reaction (as Dean figures Sam might put it). They don't talk about his visions, and he doesn't have another one in the meantime.

Dean doesn't think it's his imagination or wishful thinking that Sam has let go of the last remaining tension he'd been holding around him since Stanford, like now he finally believes Dean's got his back no matter what.

For his own part, Dean tries not to think about the whole thing. No point worrying until something happens.

–

In February, Dean gets thrown out of a second story window by a really pissed off poltergeist. He's fine, a little soggy-headed but nothing broken, but the medic back in camp pronounces him concussed, and he spends a week climbing the walls as the rest of his team goes out on patrol, Sam bitching at him to rest up over his departing shoulder.

It's the beginning of a string of bad luck: hunts gone wrong and freaks gone wild. By March conditions have worsened to the point where all combat teams have fallen back to the county line. Morale is as low as it gets, everyone dark-browed and snarling at each other like trapped animals.

Most nights, Dean lays awake, staring into the darkness and listening to the screams of the freaks in the distance. Sometimes he can tell that the others are awake too, but none of them ever say anything. They all just lie there silently, waiting for this to be the night that the camp gets attacked. By morning they're smudge-eyed with exhaustion and stress. Kite stumbles around the camp, barely there mentally even more so than usual, while Gene takes to sharpening his knives with the jittery repetition of a nervous tic.

Driven by excess energy and an abundance of stress, Dean starts to fuck around with Connolly during the day and in all sorts of dumb fucking places. He goes to grab a map from his bunk and gets shoved sideways onto Sam's as Connolly sucks him off in under three minutes; Dean catches him a few hours later in the showers and bends him over right there under the scattering water, where anyone might walk in and see. It's more cavalier than they've ever been, even in the worst of the shit they faced in the Mississippi River Delta. Neither of them say anything about stopping though.

Sam knows something's up but not what and starts giving him weird looks every time he makes an excuse for leaving him on his own. He starts watching Connolly as well, eyes narrowed and calculating. It should make Dean feel – something, he doesn't know what, but times being like they are, he can't really bring himself to care about Sammy's little brother paranoia about being left out.

–

A combat team goes out on patrol one day and doesn't return. Twelve hours later, a civilian in a tricked-out El Camino roars up to the gates of the camp. Berkman, the team's leader, is laid out bloody across the open trunk bed.

The civilian tells them the whole story as the medics bear Berkman away; the team had been lured into a suburban subdivision on the East side, one of the gated ones that's just a maze of cul-de-sacs and curved roads one would swear were designed to mess with one's in-borne sense of navigation. The team had gone in, the single exit gate had closed behind them, and then freaks had poured from all the big, pretty houses.

Dean scans the El Camino, with its DIY mounted gun and assorted dents and bullet holes; turns to look at the civilian and notes his army surplus get-up. He's seen this type before.

"And what," he says skeptically, "you just happened to be in the neighborhood?"

The man flushes, not out of embarrassment but anger. "This is my city. My whole family's from here. You useless fuckers seem to be doing _jack shit_ to protect it, so – yeah, me and some of my friends have started doing our own thing."

Dean feels a sneer start to tug at his mouth. That some rock-headed hick from this meth lab-infested shithole of a city would –

"You think you can throw together a few vehicles and guns and do a better job than us?" Dean steps forward, going nose-to-nose with the man. "You'll be dead inside six weeks."

"Men like me were hunting long before the awakening, pretty boy – "

"You're no hunter," Dean says, and then starts when a hand grabs his shoulder and tugs him back a few inches.

"Dean," Sam says into his ear. "Take it easy, man. He just brought one of our own back." Sam raises his voice and says to the civilian, "Look, you saved her life. We're very thankful. " Dean's not about to _thank_ a civilian, but he remains quiet at his brother's side.

The man glances at Sam, taken aback by the politeness and evident sincerity in his voice. He backs away a step and his voice turns gruff. "Well, yeah – I was driving down Santa Fe and happened to see her," and here he gives an awkward jerk of his thumb to Berkman's stretcher. “She was just – crawling over the fence line, barely made it. She hit the ground and didn't move. I recognized the uniform. Couldn't just leave her there, so." He shrugs and stuffs his hands into his pockets.

Dean looks back over his shoulder to the mangled and burnt body on the stretcher. She was beginning to stir, loud moans of pain reaching to them from across the yard.

"And you didn't see any others?" He asks, voiced muted.

The civilian shakes his head. "It's the only thing I could get outta her. I'd ask for her name or about her injuries, and all she'd say is – is that they were all dead. All of 'em."

–

Dean stops by the infirmary the next evening, when the medics had told him she would be awake and able to receive visitors before being shipped out to a proper medical facility.

He'd known Berkman a little, mostly through debriefs and strategy meetings with section command. She'd play him in pool occasionally during off-hours, and they'd share the types of stories and jokes that only unit leaders would really appreciate. He liked her, respected her.

When he visits the med tent, she might as well be comatose. She stares dully at the ceiling, doesn't speak a word in response to his awkward attempts at condolences or conversation or whatever the fuck it is he's trying to do. He leaves after only ten minutes, fists clenched in front of him to stifle the shaking.

When he dreams that night, it's of the white ceiling of the infirmary. A barracks full of empty bunks and abandoned personal effects – Ernst's camera, Hawthorne's flak jacket with its litany of stations, Connolly's zippo. Sam's laptop, the only real possession he'd brought with him from Stanford. Hanging over all the images is the sick certainty that he's messed up and everyone is dead.

Dean starts awake and doesn't sleep for the rest of the night.

–

After the complete slaughter of the 115th Brigade Combat Team, the trinity of suck starts making the rounds of the enlisted in the camp, gets muttered out of the corners of people's mouths in shamed undertones and nervous whispers. Dean doesn't catch any of his unit members saying it, but he's not so foolish as to think that means it's not being said.

_We're losing._

_Soon, we'll have to retreat._

_This place gonna be_ dead zone, _man._

 


	11. Chapter 11

Ernst is propped up like a doll against the far wall, legs out straight and arms still curled around his midsection. He'd spent his last minutes trying to keep his intestines from spilling out onto his lap. He'd failed.

Dean, ducked down behind the back of a plush leather sofa and clutching his near-useless P90 close to his chest, stares unblinking over at the bloody fingerprint on the glasses obscuring Ernst's open eyes. It must suck to need glasses, to be disemboweled and still feel the compulsion to push the damn things back up a nose that's gone sweat-slippery. Because when one is bleeding out in a luxury condo far from home, one tends to sweat.

The smell is overpowering. Blood and bile and shit all slowly settling to room temperature; person dies and they just become a pile of spoiled meat.

Somewhere on the other side of the sofa, on the side of the room that's not holding up the emptied corpse that was once Ernst, a door creaks open.

Its sly voice calls out, "I'm not going to play hide and seek, Dean. Make up for your shitty childhood on someone else's time."

Dean's hand drifts down to his holstered flask. He's got only a few drams worth of holy water. He knows it's not enough.

A few feet away, Ernst's glasses slip down his nose.

–

_three hours earlier_

 

"Bullshit," Hawthorne says. She's already suited up and ready to roll out, sitting in the driver's seat of the jeep with one elbow sticking out the open window. Dean and Connolly are standing around outside smoking as they wait for the others.

"Naw, girl, it's true, I swear." Connolly tries to leer with lips pinched around a cigarette. "Some people really get off on it."

"Thanks for the tip, but I've met my fair share of military fetishists, and none of them were that picky."

Dean flicks his cigarette. "Well, sounds like you were fucking some real amateurs, Hawthorne."

Connolly nods and grins. "Can't call it a fetish if you don't care about the details. You gotta _commit_ to that shit.”

Hawthorne can't let it go. "But memorizing the Rituale Romanum?"

“I swear,” Connolly says, hand on heart. “I was still _inside_ her when she corrected my conjugation.”

“Jesus.” Hawthorne shakes her head and Dean laughs.

Across the yard, Sam is shrugging on his flak jacket, but his attention is arrested by the photos Ernst is holding. He's got his neck craned to look over the shorter man's shoulder.

Ernst developed his latest roll of film just last night and so breakfast had been mostly dominated by the team grabbing photos and making off-color comments.

There was a photo of Gene hoisting a kid werewolf's head and smiling widely, those got a round of _you're a real fucking sicko, you know that, Gene._ Another showed Dean and Connolly from behind, backlit by the salt-and-burn they were busy pissing on; that one prompted Dean to cuff Ernst, _why you sneaky little pervert._ Several shots received the standard _look at this male model sonuvabitch_ , which Dean waved off as jealousy before leaving the mess to attend a mission briefing. He'd missed seeing the rest of the photos, which was what makes him wonder now which one is making Sam look so thoughtful.

His curiosity spikes when Sam makes a motion to Ernst and, after a quick exchange, is handed a photo that he then carefully folds and tucks away into a pocket.

Dean checks his watch and jumps to, slapping the top of the jeep and shouting out to his brother and the other stragglers, “Unit 23, get a move on. Let's fucking go!”

–

They're half an hour into the patrol, trundling along past an abandoned Trader Joe's that has long since been ransacked for all its contents. They get the call: possible multiple spooks at an apartment building on Veneman and Hahn. Dean checks the map and radios in a confirmation. They're the closest unit.

Tuscany Courtyard Apartments is typical of luxury apartments in California in that it doesn't look like any apartment building Dean's ever seen or could hope to live in. Stucco walls, tiled roof, and the type of recessed windows that would make a gunman cry tears of joy. Shit.

“Alright,” he says, turning to his team. “Kite, Connolly, I want you two to stay down below with the jeep, keep your eye on the doors and the radio close.” It's not something he'd have bothered with even two months ago, but Dean's top priority is making sure his team has a clear exit strategy. “The rest of us will – ”

“Dean,” Sam interrupts, nodding to something over his shoulder. Dean looks; a man in a rumpled suit is jogging across the parking lot towards them, glancing nervously around as if he didn't like being out in the open.

Dean gets out of the jeep when the man gets close. He stands with the open door between them and hefts his gun through the rolled-down window, calling out, “Okay, that's close enough.”

The man eyes the gun and blanches, quickly raising his hands. Gold glints under the sunlight from the thick Rolex adorning his wrist. “Whoa, whoa – look, man, I'm the one who reported the ghost, okay –”

Dean doesn't lower the gun but he angles it so it's no longer pointing at the man's chest. The man exhales shakily. Dean raises a hand and signals the others to get out of the jeep. When they're arrayed outside, weapons checked, he nods at the man to talk.

He lowers his hands slowly and starts to gesticulate as he talks. “There aren't many of us left in the building, so it took a while to notice the – the cold spots. And you know the electricity has been sketchy for weeks, with the substation out and all and our solar array's batteries have been overloaded twice – ”

“Jesus,” Dean says. “Get to the point.”

The man takes a step backwards, pointing at the building. “It's – I think it's on the second floor, apartment B.”

He leads them across the parking lot and into the shaded interior of the building. It turns out the outer door was a facade; the walkway extends fully forward and opens out into a courtyard. The stairs to the upper floors are likewise outdoors, only the hallways branching off to individual apartments closed in.

They pass the first floor door before climbing the stairs, and Dean spies a hand print of blood on the door handle. He glances back to Sam, who is already looking at it. They hitch their guns higher and continue up the stairs.

The team bunches up on the second floor landing as the man fumbles for his keys.

“Why even bother locking it?” Hawthorne mutters somewhere behind Dean's shoulder. He agrees with the sentiment but doesn't say anything. His eyes are locked on the man. He feels a prickle of unease starting to unfurl across his shoulders. There's something fake about the man's movements, like the nerves on display are just for show. The back of his neck is dry under the collar of his suit, even with the heat of the day and the anxiety –

The door finally swings open, revealing a slaughterhouse of a hallway, the walls streaked with gore, several doors hanging off their hinges like they'd been ripped down by with inhuman strength and rage.

“Everyone get back!” Dean yells, even as the man is turning calmly to look at them, eyes flooded a depthless black.

They have no time; the demon – _fuck_ , a motherfucking _demon_ – raises its hands. Before Dean can so much as flinch, Hawthorne, Gene, and Sam go flying backwards, clear off the landing and into the courtyard below.

Dean yells again, lunging forward against the railing as if he could reach them in time. He has a scant second of faint relief from the panic gibbering in the back of his mind when he sees them land in the pool. An enormous blue geyser of water gets thrown up, obscuring them from sight.

He whirls around again, lifting his gun, and is met with a backhand that knocks him out instantly.

–

He comes to an unknown amount of time later to shouts and gunfire in the distance. Adrenaline fights the grogginess of his injury, and he struggles up, hands automatically reaching out to check for the presence of his gear.

He spots Ernst a few feet away on the ground, curled forward on himself and face twisted in pain. To Dean's confusion, they're no longer outside on the landing, but just inside the hallway.

“Ernst. Ernst, what the fuck happened?” He crawls forward to him, arms reaching out but stuttering when the other man startles. A whimper makes its way out of Ernst's mouth.

“After it got you,” the younger man grits out, voice barely above a whisper. “it started back down the stairs to the others. I tried shooting it, but – but then it – ” His hands twitch and open up, and Dean gets his first look at his wounds.

“Jesus fucking – ”

The blood blossoms up fresh from the torn skin on his stomach. Dean can see his _organs_ , the glisten of flesh that was never meant to see daylight.

Ernst's chalk white and shaking, his face covered in tears and sweat. “I _tried_ , Dean. I tried to drag you in here, thinking we need to find another exit, but I – I couldn't make it. I can't. I can't really feel anything below my waist.”

He looks so fucking scared.

Dean shushes him, gripping his shoulder and trying to communicate that he doesn't need to say anything else. Just listening to him talk hurts.

He goes over what he'd said, latching on to the news about the others. Somewhere outside and below, the gunfire has become more sporadic, the shouts fewer and farther between.

“Okay, kid,” he says to Ernst. “I'm going to get you squared away, safe and out of sight. I need you to hold on, because we're going to get you out of here, okay?”

Ernst looks at him, eyes scared and full of a fatalistic disbelief. He always was smarter than Dean gave him credit for.

Slowly and with too many bitten-off cries from Ernst, they make there way into the nearest open apartment. Dean mostly carries the other man the last twenty feet and deposits him as gently as he can against the far wall of the living room, sponge painting the white walls red with his blood. Ernst is full on sobbing by then, breathing fitful and desperate.

“Just hang in there,” Dean urges. “We'll radio a chopper in, it'll be no time at all – ”

A noise in the hallway, loud and obvious on the otherwise silent floor.

Dean crosses the room and ducks down behind the sofa, which is huge and plump and provides ample cover. He grips his gun and glances back over to check on Ernst, maybe signal him to be quiet, but the younger man's head is hanging limply forward, his eyes open and sightless.

Dean stares, and stares, until a voice breaks him of it.

"I'm not going to play hide and seek, Dean. Make up for your shitty childhood on someone else's time."

Dean licks his lips, takes a breath. “Why haven't you killed me yet? You had your chance.” He can't work it out, has been over it again and again in the back of his thoughts as he moved Ernst. Why leave him alive? He's sure the answer can't be anything good.

The demon is almost conversational. “First and foremost – I just think it's more fun when they put up a bit of a fight, you know? Besides, why would I kill you before Sam gets back up here?”

Dean's heart nearly stops and he almost forgets his surroundings. “What do you want with Sam?”

“Just to chat. For now.” Dean braces himself, readies the flask; the demon's voice is suddenly a hell of a lot closer, only a few feet away. “Sammy's a very special boy.”

Dean doesn't want to listen to this. Sam would probably stall, try to get as much intel out of the thing as possible, but that's where Dean and he differ; no truth's worth hearing if the enemy wants to give it to you.

The demon's purring, “You know, Dean, your baby boy sure grew up _big_ and _strong_ – ”

Dean makes a face; he may get his kicks with other men sometimes, but that just sounded so _gay_.

He pivots fast, flicking his flask even as he turns, aiming for the voice, that fucking evil voice. He gets the thing full in the face, and it twists back in surprise, black-eyed and hissing. The sight will be enough fuel for his nightmares for weeks to come.

He's through the door before it can recover, shooting blindly backwards, even though he knows the salt rounds will do little more than sting the fucker.

Back in the hallway, he veers away from the door they originally came through, ignores all the other apartments and sprints for the other end of the hallway where an emergency door sits, and it has to be another stairwell, one that leads directly out of the complex entirely because its labeled emergency which means the moment he opens it –

The alarm tears through the building just as an invisible force yanks him backwards by the scruff of the neck. He lands ten feet away on his back, breath knocked out of him.

The demon's face slides into view, a snarl morphing it past any semblance of humanity. “That wasn't very nice,” it says.

Every USHC recruit is required to memorize the standard exorcisms; it's part of basic training. And if all else fails, like if you're facing down a black-eyed son of a bitch and you've never seen one before in the flesh and your mind goes blank, every soldier is also given a little laminated card printed with an abridged Rituale Romanum as part of their uniform kit. Dean's is currently tucked away in a side pocket next to the cards of basic Spanish phrases that he's supposed to use if he needs to communicate with civilians who don't speak English.

The demon's smile snaps off as he starts chanting, fast as he can get out, “Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus – omnis satanica potestas, omnis...” Fuck. He can't fucking remember the rest of the fucking words.

The demon laughs at him then, and he feels a curl of shame and real fear run through him. Before he can reach for his pocket, it grabs him by the front of his flak jacket and jerks him to his feet, moving him around like he's an oversized stuffed animal it won at the fair.

“And that little display, Dean, is why your brother went to college, and you barely scraped through your GED.” Its breath is hot and heavy on his face and stinks of sulfur. He twists away, about to make a comment about breath mints, but in a heart-stopping moment of dread, he spots Sam at the other end of the hallway.

Before he can make a comment to distract the demon, Sam's already calling out, “Let him go.” He's got his handgun, of all things, out and trained on the demon.

“Sam,” It says, delighted, and turns around, dragging Dean unwillingly along. “We were waiting for you.”

“Sam, get the fuck out of here,” Dean says. He has no faith that his brother will listen. Apparently neither does the demon, because it turns to smile at him, almost puzzled.

“Come now, Dean. Sam's not going to leave you. You may be dumb, but you sure are pretty. You're all he wants, what he _dreams_ about late at night – ”

“Let him go _now_ ,” Sam yells, looking pale and frantic. Dean's feeling out of his depth now, confused.

The demon shrugs. “Oh, if you insist.”

He gets tossed through the air again and hits the walls hard enough to break through the plaster. Ignoring the pain in his shoulder that reads _bruised_ , _probably dislocated_ , he struggles back to his feet. Just in time to see Sam put a bullet through the demon's forehead.

What the hell is he thinking – ? Dean's hands are already scrabbling for his flask again, thinking there might be a tiny bit left, but he slows when he realizes the demon's not moving to retaliate.

It jerks its meatsuit, but the body won't move. Dean steps cautiously forward, holding his shoulder. On the other side of the hallway, Sam also approaches, gun still up.

“What is this?” The demon snarls, fighting some unseen bonds. “What did you do to me?”

Instead of wasting breath on explaining, Sam starts rattling off the exorcism, voice not missing a beat or slipping in pronunciation. Dean watches dumbly as the freak roars and twists, the Latin sinking in and expelling it. In moments the body is giving up, throwing its head back and issuing forth a dense cloud of black smoke.

Dean's seen the training videos and youtube vids, but those are nothing to reality. There's a sense of palpable purity in the air when it's all over and the man's corpse has folded to the ground, the demon truly gone from this plane.

Dean looks from the body lying on the ground back to his brother, who is holstering his weapon and looking at Dean with a nervous relief. He looks almost apprehensive, which Dean doesn't really get. 

Dean licks his lips, completely at a loss. "How'd you – ?"

"Scratched a devil's trap on the bullet," Sam says. He looks down at the body. "Didn't know if it would even work, but I couldn't think of what else to do."

"No, that was... that was great. Smart thinking, Sam." Dean rubs the back of his neck, a little stunned by the fact of his brother. "Saved my bacon, that's for sure."

Sam suddenly grins hard at him, all nervousness gone like it had never been in the first place. "Had to happen some time, right?"

"Don't think this makes us even. I've still saved your ass loads more times."

Sam's grin continues undiminished. "Whatever, man. You're buying all my drinks tonight. And I want you to tell everyone about how when you needed a hero, I came swooping in to the rescue."

All right. Dean feels himself lock back into his groove, sure-footed and familiar. "Swooping in, _bullshit_. You basically stood back etch-a-sketching while I was getting ping-ponged between the walls."

"Excuse me, what happened to _that was great, Sam, you're so smart, you saved me_?"

"Jesus, see if I ever use positive reinforcement with you ever again." Dean's smiling back, mouth stretched wide despite a cut lip and the quickly swelling bruises along his jaw.

This is what his family is meant to be like. Watching each other's backs, solid as rock, no questions asked. And he may be standing in a slaughterhouse with a decapitated corpse lying a few feet away, but Sam's here too, and he doesn't have it in him not to feel a relief in that, cool and sweet.

He looks around. “We should get out of here, get back to camp before another fucking demon decides to show up.”

Sam nods in agreement but then pauses, eyes sweeping down the hallway. “Dean," he asks. "Where's Ernst?”

Dean pauses. He licks the corner of his mouth again, feels the sting, and shakes his head silently. Shuts his eyes and turns away so he doesn't have to watch Sam's face change.

–

They radio the rest of the team. Dean turns and braces himself against a wall as Sam slots his shoulder back into place. Then, ignoring Dean's insistence that he should be the one to do it, Sam goes to fetch Ernst's body.

Technically they're supposed to leave it for the disposal units, but no one on the team will want to do that. It's the one privilege they claim, to burn their own dead instead of leaving them for the mass containment pyres.

When they get down to the jeep, Dean does a quick assessment of everyone. Connolly's bleeding from some sort of puncture wound to the shoulder. Hawthorne and Kite look about as banged up as Dean feels, and Gene's passed out in the back. Probably concussed, Connolly says.

He's quiet as he relays the information, and Dean doesn't miss the way he glances at Sam and away, the furrow of his brow or the suspicion in his eyes.

“Hey,” he barks. Connolly's gaze shoots to Dean, off-guard and wide. “You have anything else you want to say?”

Dean-the-unit-leader is asking to set the record straight and clear up concerns. Dean-the-brother isn't asking but giving a warning, unspoken and deadly. He has no idea what kind of shit the demon said to the others, and it's making his stomach writhe and clench, the adrenaline waiting tirelessly again at the gates.

Connolly glances back to where Sam is gently laying down the body in the trunk. He looks at Dean.

“...Pity about Ernst,” he says finally, expression muted.

“Shit, Cleto,” Dean says heavily, releasing a breath. He watches Sam tuck a tarp over the body, clean and careful like he's dressing a wound. “You said it yourself just a few months ago. It was only a matter of time.”

–

They give Ernst a proper hunter's sendoff that night, a pyre raging in the darkness. The unit and some others from camp standing around the flames, quietly and somberly aiming to liquefy their livers. When the body burns down enough to be indistinguishable from the logs, the others start trading stories. They talk about times Ernst had messed up on a hunt or taken some stupid risk for a photo opportunity. Slowly, a few chuckles and tears make their inevitable appearance.

They'll be back on full duty tomorrow; soldiers mourn fast but fierce. Just the way it has to be, has always been.

Sam hasn't left his side all night, but when the others drift away to get into the more raucous stories, he wastes no time turning to him and asking, almost nervously, “What did it say to you, Dean?”

Dean can feel Sam staring at him, but he doesn't look away from the flames. His voice is steadier than he feels. “I didn't let it speak all that much after it said it was waiting for you.” He waits a beat and then asks the more important question, “Tell me what the others heard.”

Sam says, “Mostly ...trash talk and taunts. That we didn't know what a real war looked like, but we would. And....”

He stops and Dean turns minutely to look at him from the corner of his eye. “And what?”

Sam shifts and exhales, a brush of warmth against Dean's cheek. “It said, once I realized my full potential, that I'd rethink which side I'm on.”

“And the others heard this?” Dean's going to get an ulcer.

Sam shrugs. “Well, Hawthorne and Kite were over by Gene, trying to drag him behind cover. But – Connolly did, yeah, I think so.”

“ _Shit_.”

“Dean, what do you think it meant?” He is obviously more troubled by the words than someone overhearing them, which Dean thinks is pretty fucking blasé of him.

“How the fuck should I know?” He finally catches Sam's full expression and switches tack, softening his voice. “Look, Sam, demons lie, you know that. They'll say anything to screw with your head.”

Sam nods but still looks troubled. He turns back to the pyre, tips his beer and downs the rest of it in one go. When he lowers it again, his bottom lip is shining and full, the angles of his face carved out cleanly in shadow.

Dean cuts his eyes away and drinks his own beer, carefully doesn't think about anything for a while.

An hour later the snap of the fire has given way to a muted crackle and the voices have quieted down to a matching murmur. This is what allows Dean to hear the chopper coming in from a distance.

The shine of its lights cut through the inky blackness of the night sky, the white beams blinding in contrast to the warm orange glow of the pyre's embers. It circles twice and settles across the camp on the yard's helipad.

Dean watches with one eye still on the flames, a little curious about who could be making on unscheduled arrival to this hellhole at this time of night. The overhead camp lights offer only silhouettes of the figures who run up to greet it.

He feels Sam stiffen next to him in the exact same moment he recognizes the line of shoulders, the gait, and the nervous snap-to of the soldiers standing nearby.

“ _Dean_ ,” Sam says urgently.

“Yeah, Sam, I see him.”

Commander Winchester has returned to the San Joaquin Valley hot zone.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My life will be a little upended for a while (moving! new job! possible culture shock?), so I decided to post this shorter chapter rather than wait another several days. Thanks for your patience!

Dean's relationship with his father is complicated.

After-ripples of a four-year-old's memory of comfort and security turned into drunk silences and terrifying rages would be reason enough, but the rest starts with how John Winchester rose to prominence during the awakening.

It's a well known story. Low profile case turned national headline: a separatist compound outside of Coeur d'Alene, run by a couple who turned out to be shifters after John supplemented the camp's water stores with colloidal silver. It hadn't been enough to kill them, but the fits provided enough distraction for John to get in close and finish the job.

The whole event might have been just another hunt completed and kept quiet, except a journalist had went undercover to investigate the cult and wound up writing up the story with photos and eye-witness accounts, the whole shebang. In the resulting frenzy, the journalist got a Pulitzer and a panicking American public got a new model of heroes to look to: hunters.

The whole hero thing didn't really stick. Hunters aren't really middle America, family-friendly types. But the recognition eventually got them their own government-funded army, which most thought better than medals and florid romance novelizations any day (though both those things did also exist).

When the shifter cult story broke, Dean and Sam had been stashed away down in Kennewick. Dean still remembers the moment. He'd been on one of the motel beds, sharpening knives and thinking idly about trying to drag Sam out to the nearest bar for dinner that night. Sam had come back from the library, pale and clutching a printout of the picture that would end up splashed across every major newspaper in the country within the week: their dad crouched over a puddle of shifter skin, lifting a piece with the blade of his knife, an analytical look upon his face.

“What do we do now?” Sam had asked.

Everything was about to change, but Dean had stuck to what he knew. “We wait for him to call.”

In the ensuing chaos of media and meetings with government officials, John didn't contact them for three weeks. By then they'd gone broke. Had to steal a car and drive out to their nearest contact, Bobby Singer in Sioux Falls.

Bobby was an old school hunter, settled and ornery, suspicious of government involvement. He wanted nothing to do with the new guard. Still didn't, as far as Dean knew – but they hadn't seen or spoken to him in several years. John hadn't taken too kindly to anyone who disagreed with his budding vision of a nationalized cohort of hunters.

It burnt bridges. Not with Dean, of course, because he'd been taking orders since he was four years old and this was just one more line to fall into. But, yeah, Bobby and a few other hunters they'd known since childhood fell out of contact. Dean thought that had to be the worst of it, until Sam announced he wasn't enlisting. The argument that night damn near broke his small family in three permanently.

And so Dean, spoiled now from months with his brother, can't help but view his father's reappearance with no small measure of wariness. But at the exact same time, his heart leaps at the thought of seeing him again; talking to him; fighting with him. He can't kick that lifelong instinct that says things will be okay now that his dad is here. 

Like he said: complicated.

–

Sam is pacing. Dean watches him where he's leaning against a table in the corner of the tent. Probably shouldn't be leaning against the Commander's table, but his bones are aching, and he's still maybe half-drunk. He eyes the little hitch in Sam's step.

“You're limping.”

“From the fall earlier,” Sam says absently. “Medic said it's fine.”

Dean's head hurts, a dull pain in his left temple. “Medic probably didn't think you were going to spend the rest of the night marching a trench in the ground. Stop pacing and sit down.”

Sam, wonder of wonders, stops walking and turns to Dean, obviously just spoiling for a fight. And oh, Dean hadn't missed this, how Dad showing up turns his brother into a bad-tempered little bitch. He sighs. Sam's nostrils flare out in a huff and he opens his mouth.

Then, with quiet steps and a slithering lift of canvass, John walks into the tent.

Dean stands up from the table immediately, straight-backed despite his sore shoulder. His throat is suddenly tight. This is the first time in four years all three Winchesters have been in the same room.

“Sir,” he says. _Dad._

John pauses in the doorway for a second, looking from one to the other. He doesn't look surprised to see them in his personal quarters, and an almost rueful smile starts to curve his lips.

“Boys.” And then: “Dean.” To his surprise, John steps forward and hugs him. The tight grip on his shoulders hurts and Dean doesn't care. He breathes in and squeezes back, feeling the strong surety of his father. Some nameless anxiety eases a little inside him.

John releases him with a lingering smile and turns to Sam. Dean turns too, glancing between them apprehensively.

Sam restlessly shifts his footing, almost trembling, eyes locked on John and filled with warring emotions. His hands twitch down at his sides.

They do not hug.

“Hi Sam,” John says at last. He's still smiling, but it's sadder and surprisingly awkward.

“...Hey, Dad.”

“I'm surprised to see you here.”

Sam's eyes flicker to Dean for a bare second. “You can't expect me to believe you weren't keeping tabs on us this whole time.”

“No,” John agrees easily. “I received all the reports. But I was still surprised, since I told your brother to get you to Minnesota.”

Dean shifts from where he's standing at John's back, but Sam doesn't look at him again. “After what happened to Jess, I wanted to stay and fight. With Dean.”

Dean doesn't like looking at his brother standing against a room by himself. This usually doesn't apply when the room is their dad, and Sam's stance and expression are firm and confident. But he also looks strangely alone. It's an itch Dean can't abide, so he walks forward until he's beside him, facing John.

The mention of Jessica has made John pause. He looks down at his hands for a moment, grief and regret and anger seeping up out of him as they so often do.

“Sammy,” John says. When he looks up again, his eyes are shining with tears. “I'm sorry about your girlfriend. I would’ve done anything to protect you from that, you have to believe me.”

“I do,” Sam says quietly. “Dad, of course I do.”

Dean believes it too; it's damn near the one thing that they can be sure of when it comes to their father. The pain cuts too close to the bone, for all of them, the missing fourth piece of their family hanging over the moment.

John's not done. “Listen, Sam. Last time we were together, you and I had one hell of a fight.”

“Yes, sir.”

John smiles, a flash of white reminiscent of Sam's own usual grin. “But, disobedience or not, it’s damn good to see you again. It’s been a long time.”

Sam swallows hard and his shoulders jump in a strained acknowledgement. His head bobs. “Too long.”

They hug at last in front of Dean. When they part, he feels something lock into place under his ribs, strong and holding fast.

 


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was originally supposed to be the second half of the previous chapter. I suppose when I've finished the story I'll go back and combine the two. 
> 
> Once the dust has settled and I've got some semblance of normality again (hell, I'd take a mattress and a place to sit that's not the floor at this point), I hope to get back to regular chapter postings. Again, thanks for your patience!

The sun is just peeking out when Dean leaves his father's tent to head back to grab some shuteye. Sam lingers behind to talk a little longer, and it's a mark of how tired Dean is that he can't bring himself to even wonder about the topic of conversation.

The rest of the camp is in its dawn transition phase, parts of it stumbling back home like Dean, others waking up to bare their teeth to the new day.

Back in the barracks, Connolly's awake and sitting up against the metal headboard of his bunk, barechested except for the thick white swathe of bandages around his shoulder. He looks up when Dean walks by, an unfamiliar wariness shadowing his eyes. Dean doesn't know if he's been to sleep yet.

He's bone-tired and feels an almost extrasensory pull from his kip on the far side of the room, but he still pauses next to the other man's bed and looks down at him.

“Pain keep you up?” When he gets an indeterminate response, he presses, “How's the shoulder?”

Connolly shrugs his uninjured side. “Medic says I'll be good for patrol in a week, but I'm thinking tighten the bandage, and I can ride out with you guys tomorrow.” He gives a pale imitation of his usual gung-ho smirk.

Dean raises an eyebrow and grunts, unimpressed. He understands the frustration of being benched when the rest of your unit is out risking their asses in the field, but he also has a responsibility to not let his hunters fuck themselves up in stupid ways.

“Forget it. You tear open the stitches, get an infection, and you're looking at a much longer recovery period. Wait out the week.”

Connolly's mouth twists up one side, surprising in its bitterness. He looks down at his lap. “Of course. I suppose you got what you always wanted. Don't need anyone else now.”

Huh? “The hell?”

“Your family, all back together again.” He looks up at Dean through lowered lashes. “You think we didn't all hear that John fucking Winchester was in camp?”

“Yeah, he's here,” Dean says, a little steel entering his voice. “I don't see what the fuck that has to do with anything though.”

Connolly doesn't react to his bristling anger. Sitting there, wounded and still, he looks smaller than his usual swaggering self. Dean doesn't know what to make of his expression, the doubt laid bare on his face. He feels a prickle of discomfort and kind of wants to back away, go find a different horizontal surface somewhere and sleep for an eternity. When Connolly speaks again, none of it is what Dean expects.

“You know, down in the Delta,” Connolly says, “I thought you were like me. I mean – I knew you had family out there, but – yeah, I thought you were basically on your own.”

It's only been a few months, and Dean remembers what it was like down in the Delta all too well. Down there he was just a loose end, a spare part. A coupling in the Winchester machinery rendered obsolete when the two moving parts in his life decided to stop communicating with each other. The memory is almost alien, like it belongs to someone else. Surely Dean could never have allowed himself to be that miserable.

“I thought you understood,” Connolly says, and Dean's ready to say he _does_ , he knows what it is to lose people, but the other man continues, “But then they come back, and you just answer like nothing happened, like there's nothing wrong going on here.”

Dean stills and draws back a little. “I don't know what you're getting at, but you better watch your mouth.”

He turns to walk on, but Connolly reaches out with his bad side and grabs his arm. Dean's so surprised, he lets himself be drawn in close, closer than normal. He doesn't twist away just yet, knowing a harsh move might reopen the other man's stitches.

“Dean,” and it's a rare thing to hear his given name come out of Connolly's mouth, “just listen to me, man, okay? I know you've got this whole – _thing_ about your family, but earlier today – that demon.” He stops.

Dean narrows his eyes, feels his pulse quicken for what must be the thousandth time of this never-ending day. He leans down, sure and steady, not even noticing when Connolly drops his hand from his arm to his hip. “What about it.”

“The things it said,” Connolly begins again, practically pleading, but cuts himself off, because Sam is walking into the tent. He goes still and pale and generally reacts in a really fucked up way to the appearance of Dean's little brother.

For his own part, Sam takes them both in, eyes lingering on the grip Connolly's got on his side. A couple emotions flicker over his face, each more indescipherable than the last.

Sam clears his throat. Fidgets uncomfortably and Dean doesn't get why he won't just walk the fuck on already. “How's the shoulder, Cleto?”

Jesus.

Connolly lets Dean go and sits back on the bed, frowning and looking down at his hands, now returned to his lap. When he talks, his voice is downright polite, and doesn't that sound wrong?

“It's fine. Doc says I'll be good to go in a couple days.”

“Don't pull that shit,” Dean says instantly. “A week, no less. I mean it.” He gives him one last warning look, meant to encompass pretty much everything about the whole scene, and turns to head over to his bunk.

Sam follows close on his heels. He somehow manages to stop when Dean does without bumping into him, which is quite the display of spatial awareness, given that he's still got his head turned to look back at Connolly the whole way across the room.

He asks quietly, “What was that about, Dean?”

“You heard the man. Trying to duck doctor's orders, stupid fuck.” Dean strips his shirt over his head, winces a little while his head is still ducked because of the stiff rotation of his own screwed-up shoulder. Then, without further adieu, he drops trou and climbs into his bunk.

He groans as he stretches out fully. Never has he welcomed the too-narrow and too-firm cot of a USHC barracks in his whole life.

Sam is sitting on his own bunk, straight-backed and fully dressed and watching him with dark, unreadable eyes. Dean rolls over onto his stomach and rubs his face lingeringly into his pillow, burrowing down until only one eye is still looking out. He hopes Sam will get the message, but his brother just continues to sit and stare.

“What?” He sighs at last.

“I wasn't talking about his shoulder, and I don't think you were either,” Sam says. “I want to know what that was about.”

If there is one thing Dean is not going to tell Sam right now – or ever, really – it is what he and Connolly were just almost-discussing.

He groans and shuts his eyes, plays up the whining, which he is allowed to do and remain manly because he's the oldest. “Can't we just go to sleep? We both logged serious time as a demon's bouncing ball today and we have a half-patrol tomorrow.”

But Sam is nothing if not stubborn. “Dean, talk to me. Are you guys ...involved?”

What?

“ _What_?” Dean sits up, gobsmacked and unintentionally loud. He glances down the room, but no one shifts or looks over.

Sam's got a fucking weird look on his face, half-puppydog eyes and half-... Dean doesn't know what the fuck. It's intense, though. Whatever it is.

“You can tell me,” Sam continues. His tone is a little more familiar to Dean, reminding him of all the times when Sam was a teenager and would get sullen about Dean going out to bars or parties without him (and then get awkward and angry about being sulky).

“Dude,” Dean says, completely at a loss.

They stare at each other until Dean decides he's done with this whole day, really he is. Ignoring how Sam is still leaning forward – elbows on knees, expression practically demanding a heart-to-heart about, what, Dean's occasional penchant for the feeling of stubble against his balls? – Dean rolls over again, punches his pillow once, and decides to go the fuck to sleep.

It takes longer than he hopes, and he has to listen to Sam sigh and huff and generally spend an eternity rustling around getting his own damn uniform off, but eventually –

_finally –_

Dean's day comes to an end.


	14. Chapter 14

The Impala is a gleaming bullet on the highway in the sun.

Dean's got his elbow out the window. He's not looking at the road, trusts his car to keep him going true; instead, he's watching his brother.

Sam's asleep, head against the window and pillowed by Dean's folded jacket, just like he used to when he was kid. Except he's not a kid – he's Sam at twenty-two and far too tall to look so comfortable in Dean's passenger seat.

Zeppelin's playing, Bron-Yr-Aur low and soothing. Sam shifts and murmurs, eyes moving underneath his lids. His legs slide wide. His hair is tumbled forward, dark and soft against the strong planes of his face. Dean leans across the bench seat, hovering, unthinking, just wanting to get closer.

He reaches out to brush the bangs back from his forehead, and Sam's eyes snap open, instantly intent, like he's actually been awake and staring the whole time. Dean is frozen over him, hand still buried in his hair.

“Dean,” he says.

In his voice, Dean hears and understands everything. His hand tightens in response, grips to tug him closer – 

 

“ _Dean_.”

Dean knows nothing good will come from being conscious right now, but even in his half-asleep state, he recognizes _this_ voice, has been trained his entire life to obey it.

He cracks his eyes open and grunts. Waves a hand to show he's working on it.

John stands at the foot of his bunk, arms folded and expression impatient. Pair it with Sam standing off to the side trying to hide a smirk, and Dean feels all of sixteen and late for school.

“I'm up, I'm up,” he says, voice rough. He sits, swinging his legs over the side of the cot. Lets his head hang for just a second before looking up to meet his father's eyes.

“It's damn near noon, Dean. Is this the sort of time you've been keeping out here?”

Dean checks his watch to confirm the time and his heart sinks. How could he have slept through both the camp horn and his alarm?

He shakes off the confusion and gets to his feet. Straightens and says, not addressing his father's second question, “Sir, I'll be ready for patrol in ten.”

He stands unmoving until John nods and leaves. After his bulk has disappeared out the other end of the barracks, Dean calmly reaches down, picks up one of his discarded shoes, and chucks it forcefully at Sam's head.

“ _Hey_ – ”

“That's for fucking with my alarm.” Dean bends down and grabs his crumpled clothing from the floor. It's wrinkled and smells; he makes a face but starts to climb back into it. Nine minutes.

Sam sets his jaw. “You didn't grab a nap after the mission yesterday; you needed the sleep. Dean, you barely got five hours as it is.”

“Yeah and who's fault is that?” Dean mutters, but he really doesn't want to get into – into all _that_ again, so he says to Sam in a louder tone, “You should have at least woken me before Dad came in.”

Sam shrugs. “Yeah, but this was funnier.”

“ _Bitch_ ,” he swears, shaking his head.

“Jerk,” comes the rebuttal.

–

Despite Sam's gleeful little bitch status, he did at least think to grab Dean an egg sandwich from the mess earlier so he wouldn't have to head out on patrol on an empty stomach.

He crosses the yard, sandwich between his teeth as he checks the pockets on his flak jacket. His fingers stumble on some dried blood from the day before, but there's no time to requisition a new one, so he just ignores it. Also ignores the superstitious voice in the back of his head that says it's bad luck to go out into the field with the blood of a dead man on him.

“Dean,” Sam says determinedly as he strides along next to him. “Look, about last night – ”

Dean chews aggressively and ignores him, staring ahead at where John is standing next to his unit's jeep.

Is the man really checking to make sure Dean shows up on time? After a moment of irritation, he takes in the way he's dressed – suited up, like he's going on patrol – and a completely different sort of worry starts to creep in.

It figures his father would come into the field with him just when his team's hit its lowest point. With Ernst gone and Connolly and Gene both on bed rest, they're down three and looking like a Frankenstein unit, have to take on loose ends from other teams. And John, apparently.

“You're unbelievable,” Sam says.

John is talking to Hawthorne, who is wearing a look of strangled calm, like she's just barely holding herself back from asking for an autograph or something.

“...encountered demons before, once. Just four of them damn near tanked the whole zone,” she is saying as Dean and Sam walk up.

“Where was this?” John asks.

“Valdosta, sir.”

“You were in Valdosta?” John gives a low whistle. “That's a tough posting.”

“It was hell on earth, sir,” she says simply, not a hint of exaggeration or bravado in her voice. “We lost ninety percent of our forces in just three days.”

“But you didn't give up,” John says, approving.

“You actually going into the field, old man?” Dean says.

John turns easily, like he'd been aware of their presence the whole time. “Thought I'd stretch my legs, spend some quality time with my boys.”

Sam, right behind Dean, huffs a sarcastic laugh and mutters something too low for anyone to hear. Dean gets the gist and elbows him into silence.

“I'm still driving,” he tells his father.

–

The patrol is conducted in near silence, the team somber from the loss of Ernst and cowed by the presence of the top brass sitting shotgun.

The whole time, Dean can't shake the feeling that they're being evaluated, like John's running down some unknown mental checklist. It's been a while since he wasn't in command in the field, and he's surprised at how strange it feels to be following orders again.

They hit trouble a little ways into the third hour. It comes in the form of an invisible force broadsiding the jeep and knocking it clear off the road.

Dean curses and struggles to the straighten the vehicle, but another force hits and they goes tumbling over like a Hot Wheels toy. The jeep rolls and skids twenty yards before coming to a stop resting on the driver's side.

Dean coughs. He struggles with his seat belt, which is pressing painfully into his shoulder. The jeep is filled with groans from the others. He moves his head carefully, trying assess his own pain but also needing to get a look at the others.

“Sam? Dad?”

“I'm fine,” Sam says instantly from the back. “But we've got some injuries back here.”

John is already moving, kicking at his door. It swings open with a harsh creak and then Dean's looking up into the sky.

“Alright,” John turns and addresses everyone. “I'm going to climb out and we're going to pass the injured up first. Stay alert and move fast, whatever did this is probably not done yet.”

They make quick work of it. Only one of the new guys is seriously injured, though the rest of the team's pretty banged up, bruises and cuts. Dean puts the uninjured new person, a woman named Thompson, on hauling out the jeep's salt supplies and iron batons. He posts Kite and Hawthorne to keep an eye out and then turns to the radio to call in for support.

The neighborhood's abandoned, strips malls and parking lots deserted. Dean feels exposed, his team standing out in the open with no vehicle or means of protection.

“We got spooks,” Kite calls.

“How many?” John and Dean say at the same time. A senseless question, because he's already turning, gun coming up. Words fail him for a second when he looks.

“Jesus,” he hears Sam breathe, clear as if he was inches from his ear.

It's a swarm.

Several dozen flickering spirits, fritzing in and out of visibility and every one of them staring in their direction.

“How – ?” Sam starts.

“Mass suicide,” John says grimly, looking at the swarm with a critical eye.

Even now, Sam's got questions. “How do you know it was suicide?”

“Look at them. All young, same age bracket, no visible sign of struggle or injury. More common than you'd think. Death cults. Group gets it into their head to make a death pact and they take the poison with the intent of coming back as spirits.”

“But _why_?” The question is more rhetorical this time, Sam sounds curious and intellectual fucking stimulated, of all things. Like maybe he'd like to ask the spooks some questions and write it up for his anthropology class or whatever the fuck.

Dean's heard of swarms, but never seen one. Teenagers being the dramatic shitheads that they are, some of them get to thinking that they can escape the war. Save themselves by becoming spooks. It makes him angry; it makes him sick.

“Incoming,” Hawthorne shouts, and the gunfire starts up.

–

Some time later, Dean doesn't know how long, and they're pinned down good and hard. The temperature's dropped a good twenty degrees, making their breath visible and the tips of Dean's fingers numb.

John sent Hawthorne and the others off to locate the death site and radio its location when they find it. Back at the jeep, the three Winchesters stand over the unconscious man and work in a clean rotation like a well-oiled machine, two shooting while the third reloads. They just need to hold out until the choppers come in.

The spooks have surrounded them in a tight mass and are pressing in against the hastily spilled salt circle. They're young and therefore weak, but what they lack in finesse and strength they make up for with determination.

Sam's switching over to reload when he cries out and hit the ground, clutching his head.

“ _Sam_!” A spook makes it through, and Dean dispels it with a swing of a baton before bending over his brother.

Sam's eyes are screwed closed and his fingers are trembling slightly where they grip his temples. His breath puffs out in short foggy bursts. Dean's hearts sinks. Not now, not fucking now.

“What's wrong with him?” John demands, flint-eyed and suspicious even as he continues to shoot.

And there's a moment, only a second in reality but a stretch of eternity for Dean, who has never lied to his father before. He looks from Sam to John and follows his gut; for the first time, it's not going John's way.

“It's nothing, sir.” Dean straightens. “He got thrown around pretty bad yesterday. Migraine's probably related.”

“Well reform the line,” is all John says.

Jaw clenched, Dean turns back to the circle, leaving Sam to gather himself back up again, even though all he wants to do is grab him by the shoulders and hold on tight.

He keeps shooting. Even though his ears are ringing, he can still hear Sam as he gulps ragged air and climbs shakily to his feet. After a few seconds, he's back next to Dean and shooting again. His face is shining with sweat.

They're running low on salt rounds. Dean isn't sure how long they'll be able to make it with the batons alone. He always thought he'd go down with his family by his side, but Christ, not in a fucking swarm of emo teen spooks.

As if they can sense their impending vulnerability, the spirits grow in energy, moving more erratically, pale cold hands yearning forward for them.

Dean clicks empty and icy fingers are instantly there to clasp his throat. Before he can swing or shout, a chopper bursts over the line of buildings at their back. He's never been so glad to hear the beat of a rotor.

A gunner appears in the open side.

“Boys, get down!” John yells before shrinking against the hard metal of the jeep. Dean and Sam throw themselves back just as the gunner opens up.

Salt rains down from above like a vengeful cleansing, washing the spooks away.

–

Dean sits next to Sam on the ride back to camp. Hawthorne's group radioed in the coordinates to a second chopper and a different team is taking care of the clean up. His unit is sacked out over every surface in the chopper, and they look oddly cheerful for the most part. Spook swarm is pretty good notch in the belt, he supposes.

He keeps an eye on John, who's up front with the pilot, and turns his head so he can speak into Sam ear.

He says quietly, “Back at the jeep, was that a – ?”

Sam just nods, thin-lipped.

“What did you.... What was it?”

Sam shakes his head and says, “Not now. I'll tell you later.”

But they don't get a chance later; John calls them into his tent as soon as they get out of debrief and med check. Dean's aching and still exhausted and now worried about Sam on top of everything else.

He can't believe it, but he's actually a little sick of seeing his father at the moment.

John makes them sit in front of his desk and then stands there surveying them with his arms folded across his chest, legs in parade rest. Dean can't read his expression.

“You boys did good out there,” comes the unexpected announcement.

Sam and Dean exchange a look, wary and nonplussed as he continues.

“You've probably been wondering why I'm in the area.”

“Right, 'cause you couldn't just want to see your kids,” Sam says. Dean nudges him, and he gives Dean a half-hearted scowl.

John, thankfully, lets it slide. “I've been keeping tabs on you boys, and I hear a lot of good things. This zone is going dark, but your team has few casualties and a high clearance rate.”

“Thank you, sir,” Dean says. He tries not to think about how casually John just verbalized what everyone in camp has only been able to speak about in whispers, that they might lose the zone.

John gets down to business. “I have a mission, and I require a team to escort me, back me up if trouble arises.”

“A mission?” Deans says.

“What kind of trouble?” Sam asks.

John doesn't answer them directly. He leans over the desk and taps a finger on the map spread over it. Dean can't see from where he's sitting. “It should be straightforward, but the players I'm working with are unpredictable. I need a team that can think on its feet. I want to be in Mountain View four days from now.”

“Mountain View?” The tone of Sam's voice, like he knows something and doesn't like it, makes Dean look over. Sam's pale. He catches his glance and quickly explains, “Ravenwood's up in Mountain View. The city hired them after the first rupture last year. It was a pretty big deal on campus, a lot of protests.”

“Oh, fantastic.” Dean doesn't hide his disgust; like most of the USHC, he despises mercenaries. Leave it to the rich to get their own private military contractors.

To John, he says, “And you think you're going to get anything out of those guys?”

“This is an official request,” John says grimly. “Legally, they have to provide assistance in anyway they can.”

Dean quirks an eyebrow skeptically but doesn't say anything. They've all heard the stories of corruption and abuse, there's no point in going over it again if his dad's made up his mind.

“And what kind of assistance are we looking for, exactly?” Sam asks, always pressing.

John looks at Sam, considering. He waits just long enough to emphasize that he doesn't need to furnish an answer before setting his hands down on the table, tipping his head, and saying, “They have in their possession a certain gun. A special gun.”

Sam and Dean are dutifully quiet, waiting.

John looks between them and his voice is heavy with significance. “They say this gun can kill anything.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter, man. It did *not* want to get written. If I could, I'd salt and burn it. 
> 
> Those familiar with the TV show [Jericho](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jericho_%282006_TV_series%29) might notice the theft of the private military company Ravenwood, which is basically a knockoff of Blackwater, which is basically evil incarnate.


	15. Chapter 15

The day before the Mountain View mission, Dean and John discuss logistics.

The situation to the west has changed since the last time Dean drove out, when he first fetched Sam from Stanford. The Bay area is still largely intact, geography and density working their usual charm. But the space in between here and there? Not so much.

John wants to take highway 130 through the Diablo mountain range.

“It's direct,” he says.

“It's isolated,” Dean counters.

In many respects, becoming one of the leaders of the USHC was the most inconvenient thing that could have ever happened to John. Dean wasn't under any illusions about whether his father would be happier going it alone. He preferred efficiency at all costs, no matter how reckless it could sometimes be. He treated strategic concerns like supply lines and reinforcement maneuverability like bothersome afterthoughts.

His father is stern. “If you'd read the reports, you'd know why we can't go up through Livermore.”

Dean grits his teeth and stands straighter. “I read the reports, sir.” Easy, _easy_. “But we can plan for Livermore. And I'd rather take on a known difficulty where backup can easily reach us than go through a restrictive terrain of unknown hostility – ”

“Dean, it's decided,” John says with finality. He looks away, visually dismissing him even before adding, “Now go sort out your team. I want everything ready to roll by 0600.”

Dean obeys instantly, but he seethes the whole walk across the base.

There's a feeling in his gut he doesn't like, misgivings about this whole mission. But as with everything else in his life, he has no other option but to go forward.

–

It's the middle of the day, so the barracks are empty. Even Connolly's off somewhere, probably trying to bribe a medic into signing off on him going on the mission. He's wasting his time; there's no way Dean will allow it.

Dean's eyes take a few seconds to adjust to the dim lighting of the barracks and then he sees that the mail's been dropped off. Letters and care packages from those few lucky enough to have family and friends alight various bunks. Since Dean's main source of mail is now sleeping three feet away, he isn't expecting anything. So he's mildly surprised to find the postcard on his cot.

Dean stares bemused down at the photo of the Great American Ball Park lit up and packed at night. He flips it over and sees all that's written in the message space is a terse: _39.1600, -84.4146_. It's in his father's handwriting.

“What the hell,” he mutters.

He turns on his heel and goes to track John down again, but the man's holed up in a meeting with section command. So Dean does what he's always done when his father isn't available, which is go find Sam instead.

–

When they'd finally grabbed a moment alone earlier in the week, Sam told Dean what he saw during the spook swarm.

To be honest, it had sounded like a whole lot of nothing – a man Sam didn't recognize standing in a bland and unfamiliar room and talking vague crap about contingency plans. Hardly as exciting as a girl getting electrocuted by the touch of her girlfriend.

Whatever it sounded like to Dean, though, Sam had clearly been troubled. He spent the next several days walking through camp with his head ducked, started hanging around on the northern rampart, staring out at the falling city of Modesto.

And that's where Dean finds him now.

“Whatever's going through your mind right now, you need to drop it,” he says to him as he walks up.

Sam turns his head slightly, but doesn't look over. He's been doing _that_ a lot lately too. It makes Dean feel itchy and unsettled, not having his brother's eyes on him.

“How can you tell me to drop something when you don't even know what it is?” He asks, distracted and disobedient.

“Because I know you,” Dean says. “And I know that look, Broody McBrooderson. Nothing good comes from that face.”

Sam's mouth quirks up. “Thanks.” He sighs then. “I've got a bad feeling about this mission, Dean.”

Dean pauses. “Normal-worry-bad-feeling or psychic-vision-bad-feeling?”

Sam cuts his eyes over. “The former.”

“Yeah, well, you're not alone there.” He steps up and leans his forearms on the railing, shoulder brushing Sam's. “We're taking 130 through the Diablo range.”

Sam's brow knits as he works out the route in his head. “Not a lot of options for maneuverability there.”

“I know.” But he didn't come to Sam to bitch about their dad's decisions. He's about to bring up the postcard when Sam starts talking. Everything from his tone to the cadence of his speech sounds rehearsed, heavy with importance, and Dean's thoughts about the postcard subside in the face of it.

“I don't know how long we can keep doing this, Dean.”

He tenses. “What do you mean?”

“It's just – it hasn't been like I thought it would. The fighting feels like we're just spinning wheels and after what happened with Ernst – I don't feel like I'm making a difference here.” He sighs and ducks his head so hair hair falls forward over his eyes. Voice drops lower for the next part: “Or that I'm any closer to finding the thing that killed Jess.”

Anger is a slow unfurling thing inside of Dean. Suddenly his heart's racing like they're in the middle of a firefight. “Sorry it hasn't been as glorious as you imagined, Sam – ”

“That's not what I meant.”

“ – but you gotta look at the big picture with this kind of thing.”

Sam turns fully to face him, jaw set. “I am looking at the big picture, and we're losing, Dean. We're losing the zone.”

He's looking at Dean evenly. Earnest, even regretful, like he's trying to let him down gently or some shit.

Dean stares back him, jaw clenched. “So what do you even mean, Sam? Spit it out. What do you think you're going to do.”

“I don't know,” he says. “But I think I'm done after Mountain View.” He hesitates and then adds, eyes beseeching, “And I think you should be too. Come with me, Dean.”

Dean barks out a laugh at that, surprising them both. He looks away, out over the wall, and wipes a hand over his mouth. His whole body's off-kilter now, like a Jenga piece has been unceremoniously yanked out of somewhere critical.

He'd forgotten this feeling. Fucking Sam.

“You think you can just quit the service?” He asks. “That's not how it works.” He feels like he's spent his whole damn life telling Sam _how things work_ , only for his brother to –

“Who's going to stop us? Dad? Section command? What, they going to arrest us, clap on the irons, with all the shit going on out there?” He lays it out all these real questions like they're mere rhetoricals. Thing is, if anyone could make them so, it would be Sam. Dean's stomach twists.

“You're a selfish son of a bitch, you know that?” He says finally.

A muscle in Sam's jaw jumps and he leans back as if hit, nodding and smiling bitterly.

“You really think that?”

“Yeah, I do. You just go through life doing whatever the hell you want – ”

“You can't even begin to imagine what I _want_ , Dean.” There's a different edge to his tone suddenly, something furious and dark glittering in his eyes that Dean instinctively backs away from without being able to explain to himself why.

“I know enough,” he says instead. “Same old story it's always been with you. You want out, want to leave your family. Run away.”

Sam punches him.

Dean recovers and straightens up again, tongues his stinging lip. He looks over at his brother, who's glaring back, chest heaving.

“All right,” Dean says, grinning bloody-mouthed and cheerless, “Let's do this.”

It gets vicious and dirty fast. It isn't sparring, what they are doing; it's a red-tinged, blind intent to _hurt_.

Sam gets in another shot to his ribs before Dean blocks his next blow. He grabs Sam under the arms, pinning them to his side, and drags him down to bounce his head off the railing of the rampart.

Sam goes down but kicks out as he does, plowing Dean's shin with a buckling force. Then they're rolling over the ground, kicking dust up, scraping their skin bloody over dirt and concrete.

People are yelling above them but Dean pays it all no mind, his whole will aimed at the twist of Sam's face, the vulnerable opening on his right side.

Strong hands get him by the back of his collar and haul him up, off the ground and his brother. He resists until words filter in and he realizes his father has arrived.

“The day before a critical mission and you do _this_?” John is white-lipped with fury, staring from Sam, still on the ground, to Dean.

Dean jerks out of the grip of the corporals holding him and looks down and away. He feels sick with humiliation and lingering anger. He's burning with it.

Blood drips slowly down his chin. He catches Connolly's eye from the crowd that has gathered. The man is staring at him, grim and knowing, and suddenly Dean just can't take it. Any of it.

He turns and walks away. His steps don't so much as falter when John calls after him.

–

He takes a long shower, flagrantly blowing past the five-minute time limit. With one hand up on the tiles, Dean leans forward into the hot spray and uses his other hand to gingerly prod his blooming bruises. Runs fingers over his ribs and along his nose to make sure nothing is cracked.

It feels good to press the bruises, almost like he can catch a secondhand buzz from the adrenaline and anger of earlier. It's a good distraction from thoughts of his brother staring up at him from the ground, wide-eyed with furious hurt.

Afterwards, standing in nothing but a towel, he studies his face in the burnished metal mirror of the locker room. Under the buzzing fluorescents his skin looks grey and sickly, his eyes dull and tired.

It's here that Dean finally admits to himself the truth.

They _are_ losing. Not just the zone – though, yeah, that too – but the whole damn war. Even someone who barely snatched up a GED has to be able to read the numbers of their win-loss ratio.

Dean's been to five different postings since he officially joined up and only two of them could be called a win with a straight face. He knows how that looks, but what the fuck is he supposed to do about it? It's not like he can just retire, hide out on some farm in Kansas until a monster comes calling and ends it all for him.

When he and Sam were younger, their dad had told them that vampires were extinct. Had been wiped out by hunters, at least in North America. It had meant something to Dean. Back then, he believed in an _end_ , an afterlife of settling down, maybe even having a family. The monsters, all those evil sons of bitches – they weren't unstoppable. His dad said so.

Well, then there was the awakening, the formation of the USHC and a formalized communications network and, hey, turns out the vamps hadn't been wiped out after all. Not even close.

John took the news with little more than a curse and a shrug. But Dean? He felt like he'd been sucker-punched, like someone had come up on his blind spot and just laid him out.

So he's known for a long time that the world is going to end bloody. He knows he's going to go down swinging.

But he'd gotten complacent, spoiled; he'd gotten used to the idea that his brother would be at his side when it happened.


	16. Chapter 16

It's cool and drizzling the day they leave Modesto.

Dean is standing at the wall, arms cradling his P90. He wasn't scheduled for a watch, but it's just been that kind of morning. It's not like he'd been sleeping.

The violence is all around them now; faint explosions come from town, dulled bursts muffled in the rain. Unable to see; unable to unhear. The low cloud cover doubles down on the camp, making it feel claustrophobic. Like they're trapped down here with the freaks and there's no escape.

It's hard to believe anyone ever lived here, now.

The 7th is out there trying to take out an arachne nest that a patrol stumbled upon the day before. The team had come back trailing cobweb, long strands of white clinging to every inch of their faces, hands, and guns. One man had a full blown breakdown in the middle of the yard and had to be hustled off to the medic tent before the hysteria could spread. But you could feel the tension afterwards. A quiet in the ranks, little flinches when people passed each other.

Dean doesn't feel good about leaving them all here.

The relief shift approaches. One of the women calls out, “You're out, sarge. Good luck today.”

He hesitates, caught in a turn, and meets her eyes for a surprised second. She's vaguely familiar, a three-zone vet he's spoken to here and there on joint patrols. Abbey? No – Abilene, he thinks.

He ends up just nodding his thanks and walking away from the wall. Instinct tells him to glance back one more time, but he keeps going.

Runoff gathers in the alleys of the camp, making small temporary streams carrying uncollected trash and bullet casings that are impossible to step clear of. He tramps through the puddles and muck and forces himself not to duck his head against the rain.

“Dean, hey,” Sam says, appearing out of nowhere. He's got a bad shiner. The dark, tender flesh is pressing in on his right eye, making his expression look more pitiful than ever. The swelling hasn't gone all the way down yet. Stupid Sam. Probably didn't ice it properly. You give a kid a soda can _one_ time because the ice machine is broken, and then you spend the rest of your life dealing with the consequences.

Dean takes this all in with one glance and then looks quickly away again.

“Dean, we need to talk.”

He doesn't say anything, just increases his speed a little – not enough to look like he's running away, but to make a point. Judging from the way Sam throws his hands up in the air and cusses him out, the message is received.

He approaches the three jeeps they're taking out to Mountain View, Sam trailing like an albatross at his back. A small crowd is gathered – to send them off or maybe just get a glimpse of the famous John Winchester, who knows. Connolly is standing at the front, bandage peeking out from under his shirt and his handsome face creased in a tight frown.

“You should radio if there's any trouble,” Connolly says as he passes him. It's a needless reminder; alerting the camp of any action is standard protocol. Dean looks him over with a raised eyebrow. He can hear Sam huff behind him, which makes him twitch with more annoyance than is really warranted.

“Connolly, believe me,” he says, distracted. “If there's any trouble, the whole base is gonna know about it.” The other man falls back with a disappointed look, but Dean's too tapped out to feel anything about that.

He does a quick visual sweep of his team to makes sure every one is accounted for. John is already sitting in one of the jeeps, elbow hanging out the window, which would piss him off if it were any one else.

He glances again at his brother, who is turning away from Connolly, looking, of all things, a little smug. The expression transforms instantly into something ugly and incensed when Dean announces the vehicle assignments and puts him in with John.

Dean gives a joyless smirk and climbs into his own jeep.

–

Sector 4 to the southwest is a mess, full of hostiles and roads made impassable with abandoned cars and debris, so they have to make a big loop north avoiding it before they can cut down again to hook up with Del Puerto Canyon Road.

They pass a Walmart superstore, where a makeshift camp of survivors are squatting. The huge parking lot has been transformed into a quasi work yard and is walled off by a hodgepodge of abandoned cars and shipping containers. A few people stand on top of the wall and watch their jeeps pass, faces blanks and eyes empty. If they tried to go in there now, there's equal chance they'd be treated like the enemy than as a friendly.

A tight, sick feeling takes up residence in his gut as soon as they start in through the Diablo range. It's just a two lane road winding through a tight canyon. The sight lines are all shit, and Dean can't see the horizon. The hills on either side of the road pen them in, like they're livestock in a corral.

He wishes for the millionth time that John had at least agreed to some air support, conspicuousness be damned.

As he drives, he finds his eyes drawn to the rearview mirror, to Sam and John's jeep, and lingering there despite himself. He thinks maybe he should have placed them all in the same jeep after all and screw how uncomfortable it would have been. It's not like Sam is going to try to have a brotherly heart-to-heart with John sitting shotgun.

They're half an hour into the canyon drive when Hawthorne says urgently from the passenger front, “Hostiles, 2 o'clock!”

They come streaming down the hill ahead of them like ants swarming from a disturbed colony, several dozen at least. It's not like anything he's ever seen before, the way they throw themselves into the road without hesitation or even awareness.

“What are they?” Someone from the back shouts. “Revenants?”

But the bodies are alive and sickeningly human. The jeep takes a hit and blood paints the windshield as a body tumbles to the side. He hits the brakes, spin the wheels, and takes the precious second or two to watch the body; it doesn't move again.

“Spell possession,” he shouts. “Shoot to kill!”

Behind him he's aware of the other jeeps swerving, of a terrible crash and explosion and screams, but he can't look now, not with three other hunters in his jeep that he's responsible for.

Most of the possessed bodies are dressed like farm hands; flannel, sun hats, and work gloves that start to come over all patchy in blood as the helpless civilians mindlessly pound their fists and bodies against the sides and windows of the jeep. Dean lowers his window and puts three bullets in three foreheads, neat and fast.

He doesn't think about who he is shooting; if a witch has them, they're won't be released so long as their body still breathes. There is no choice here.

Glass breaking from the back; some of the possessed have pounded their way through the trunk window and have Kite in a chokehold. Hawthorne takes it out before Dean has to.

He doesn't know how long it takes to clean up the possessed horde. He just knows that sometime later he is standing outside the jeep, staring down a roadway littered in human bodies. It looks like they massacred a small village. Cold sweat mixes with the hot blood down the side of his face. He doesn't know if the blood is his. He can't really feel anything.

The other two jeeps are totaled.

“Sam!” He shouts, breaking out of his trance and into a run. “Dad!”

The third jeep in the convoy is a smoldering wreck, like one of the possessed had been carrying a grenade, but that wouldn't make any sense. Sam and John's jeep is off the road completely and on its side in the ditch. Second time in a week – he'll make the joke if Sam would just be there to roll his eyes at it.

Tension dials down to a more manageable level the moment he sees Sam bent over John. There are six bodies laid out next to them; the two other hunters from their vehicle and four possessed. Sam looks grim and has cuts on his face, but is otherwise uninjured. John is holding his shoulder funny. Dislocation.

Sam looks at him and relief flickers over his face, alternately turning him from a hardened soldier to his kid brother and back. “Dean,” he says. “Thank god. We need to get out of here, if the witch responsible for this – ”

“I know,” he says, thinking fast. “We'll get back to base and regroup and then – ”

“No,” John says through gritted teeth. He stands up, one hand bracing his injured shoulder, and faces everyone. At some point Hawthorne and the others had appeared at Dean's back.

It takes a second for him to comprehend. He exchanges a swift glance with Sam before starting, “Sir, we've lost two vehicles and we're down five people.”

“We continue forward,” John says, unmoved. “Turning back now won't do any good.”

Sam stares at him, eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”

John directs the others to start moving gear from the wrecked jeep. He steps over the bodies of the two dead hunters like he's only cursorily aware of them as objects in the way of the ground. “Omens, Sam. Been picking up for a while, and all of them point to a sizable demonic presence heading this way.”

At this, the others all straighten up, alarm crossing every face. Sam goes white. Dean flashes to the demon from last week, Ernst's sightless gaze and him sitting there useless to do anything about it.

“It's why this mission was time-sensitive,” John says. “I think – I think this is the real thing. The one that got your mom. And Sam's girlfriend.”

Dean sees Sam straighten up out of the corner of his eye.

John says, “Camp's going to have its hands full. And we still got shit to do.”

Dean finds his voice. “If Modesto base is going to be up against _demons_ – ”

“We have to go back and help,” Sam finishes, stepping up next to him like they'd never fought the day before, like John just hadn't dangled Jess's killer in front of him like a big, evil carrot.

John's tone brooks no arguments. “No.”

“Sir,” Dean says. “I agree with Sam. I think – ”

“Dean, I don't know where this attitude is coming from, but you need to fall in line.” He shifts and shares his steely gaze to the rest of the group. “Our only hope – the only hope for those back in Modesto and everywhere else – lies in Mountain View. Wins like this one don't come without casualties.” He looks back at Dean and Sam, and his gaze doesn't soften, but his voice thaws, like it's just for them. “But it will be worth it. I promise you.”

Dean feels numb as the others go back to moving gear in silence. He doesn't even offer to help while Sam resets John's shoulder. All he can do is stare down at the two dead hunters and the sky reflected back from their open eyes.

It's not supposed to be like this. His family, his family's mission, it's not supposed to be incompatible with his _team_ , with the rest of the USHC.

“Dean,” Sam says, suddenly close. A hand closes around the side of his neck, cupping it with a strange gentleness. Dean realizes with a weird lurch in his chest that the gesture is one John used to make when they were kids. He wonders when Sam's hand got that large.

“Come on, man,” Sam says, steering him back to the only operational jeep remaining. A thumb swipes through the blood on his neck and Dean swallows, blinks back to awareness. Sam is watching him closely.

“Don't worry, Sam,” he says before climbing back into the driver's seat. “It's almost all over, right? I'm fine.”

 


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So since I posted the last chapter [an admittedly long ass time ago], Michael Herr passed away. _Dispatches_ consumed my life when I read it last year and was the direct inspiration for this story. He’d probably be pretty bemused about inspiring a wincest slash fanfic, but oh well. If you have an interest (and stomach) for war stories, do yourself a favor and grab it from your local library, or wherever people get books nowadays.

Even before he realized Mountain View was the end of the line, Dean felt the whole thing was way above his pay grade. His job is to fight and work with what's in front of him, not go tooling off to negotiate with hostile private outfits.

But his dad wanted him there. He allowed himself to be blinded by that.

For as long as he can remember, fighting was the only thing he was good at, the only thing he ever wanted to do. That never changed, even as everything around him did – like how early in the war, one of the few things that set him apart from others was that it was personal for him. But now the people who've lost loved ones to the freaks number in the millions.

So he lost his mom when he was four, and that gaping hole in his life never really closed, so what. How is that different than Connolly's situation? Most of his family got torn apart in front of him when he was sixteen. Or Hawthorne? She won't even talk about what happened to hers. He just knows she doesn't have one anymore. Even Kite's lost a sister.

So the ironic thing? In the end, Dean is the one with people left to lose.

—

“It’s like we’re descending through the seven circles of hell,” Sam says from the back seat.

San Jose is rough. Masses of people from the other side of the I-5 have fled west rather than leave the state. Dean thought that the end of the world would beat out the typical Californian distaste for the rest of the country, but clearly he’d underestimated Golden State loyalty.

The streets of the city bear all the standard marks of a poorly managed flood of refugees. Overcrowding, long lines outside of stores and governments buildings. Trash in the streets and a palpable atmosphere of resentment from the locals. It only gets worse the further into the metro area they go.

A tent city is still a tent city, even if many of those tents are the latest designs from REI.

Sam keeps staring out the window with a look of horrified fascination, no doubt mentally comparing everything with the last time he came through. Dean’s just glad they don’t have to go as far as Palo Alto.

They come up against the first Ravenwood checkpoint just outside the Santa Clara University campus.

Dean takes one look at the bottlenecked traffic at the junction where Alameda splits off and makes an executive decision to pull off the street and drive down the sidewalk. Shouts and car horns explode in his wake, and pedestrians scramble out of the way ahead. Moses, eat your heart out.

He reaches the checkpoint and muscles his way back into the line ahead of a slick blue Bimmer, whose driver takes advantage of the lowered top to scream expletives at him. Dean chooses to interpret the profane slander against his parentage as yuppie-speak for _thank you for your service to this country._

“I appreciate your sense of efficiency, Dean,” his father says dryly from the passenger seat. “But try to keep in mind that we are here to negotiate. Causing an accident with one of their clients will not ingratiate us to Ravenwood.”

Dean briefly meets Sam’s eyes in the rearview mirror, and Sam bites back a smile before looking away.

“Yes, sir.”

Even though they are next in line for the gate, it takes twenty minutes before they are allowed to pull up. When they do, Dean rolls down his window, sticks his elbow out, and gives the Ravenwood soldier his best fuck-you smile.

It’s been said that the USHC and Ravenwood dislike each other even more than either outfit does the freaks. But that’s humanity for you.

The sentry casts an unimpressed look over the Jeep. “Come to see what a real operation looks like?”

“You know, we see so much action on the front lines, mental health professionals say it’s important to take a break here and there for a good laugh.” Dean glances back at the impatient man behind him. “Figured watching you boys play soldier for a bunch of rich folk would do.”

“Dean,” John says, and Dean sits reluctantly back, allowing John to pass over their documentation.

The sentry’s smirk fades and his eyes widen slightly when he sees the name on the paperwork. He grabs his radio and starts speaking quickly into it, all the while taking these little peeks at John. Within three minutes he has stamped the correct papers and waved them through.

Dean grits his teeth and pulls the Jeep forward across the ward lines.

The area within Ravenwood’s coverage zone stands in stark contrast to what they saw outside of it. They haven’t even gone a quarter mile from the last refugee shelter, and already the road has given way to neatly trimmed hedges and orderly traffic. You might not know there’s a war going on if you never have to step past the checkpoint. It’s surreal.

It’s also unnatural. You don’t get oases of peace in the middle of a hot zone unless someone is manipulating some serious resources and excluding a lot of people. Dean thinks of the unlucky crowds they saw crammed back in San Jose.

“Fuckin’ mercenaries,” he says. Mutters of agreement float forward from the backseat.

—

They hit eight more checkpoints before they finally pass into Mountain View.

Their dented and blood-sprayed Jeep garners a lot of shocked looks from pedestrians, and it’s all Dean can do to not lean into the disturbance they’re causing by blasting some Metallica. But the tension and excitement contained in the line of John’s body has done nothing but grow they closer they got to the Ravenwood HQ, so he leaves off.

They pull through the final gate close to three in the afternoon. If they thought Mountain View had been protected from the freaks, that was nothing to the Ravenwood camp itself, which is ringed by five layers of protection and has stadium-grade floodlights every five feet. Dean thinks midnight must look like noon in the main yard.

“I bet they have a year’s supply of food and water somewhere in there,” Sam says as they climb out of the Jeep. They slam the doors and stare up at the large prefabbed building. “That’s what they do, you know. Roll up into a city promising protection, then they leach off the community and take everything worth having.”

Dean glances at him, eyebrow arched questioningly at his tone; Sam has never expressed much opinion on Ravenwood previously.

Sam catches his look and shrugs. “It’s different seeing it in person. Jess was on the organizing committee for the Stanford protests.”

John catches his words as he rounds the front of the Jeep and says sharply, “Stow that talk. We’re here to negotiate.”

They fall silent and follow him up to where a lieutenant is waiting at the entrance to the building. The man is standing at parade rest, and he tracks John with unblinking eyes. Sweat gleams on his forehead.

Dean feels a prickle of unease. He tries to shake it off; he knows his father has a reputation. He can’t think of what profit Ravenwood would gain in double-crossing them.

“Commander Winchester,” the lieutenant says, somehow managing to give the appearance of straightening his already impossibly straight back. “The board is already in the ready room.”

“Well, wouldn’t want to keep the suits waiting,” John says. His tone indicates that he couldn’t give a damn whether they waited all day, and the lieutenant swallows hard. They are led inside without any more delay.

The HQ appears to be an assemblage of dark nondescript hallways, and if Dean was less used to sparse military set ups, he knows he’d be lost within minutes.

Ravenwood soldiers straighten up and watch them as they pass. Conversations get cut short, and the tramp of their collective boots sounds unnaturally loud.

Sam mutters to Dean, “You ever been to a meeting like this?”

Dean, looking all around with just his eyes and keeping his expression blank, says, “Nope.”

“Something about all this doesn’t feel right. I was hoping you could tell me I'm being paranoid.”

“Can’t do that either, Sam.” Dean glances at him. “Look, pass word to the others to keep their guard up, would you? I’m going to talk to Dad.”

Sam nods and slips back to the others. Dean subtly quickens his pace until he has caught up to John.

“You notice how jumpy all the grunts are?” Dean says quietly. “Why do you think that is?”

John’s expression flickers, rueful amusement escaping for just a second. “It’s like you said, Dean. These men aren’t used to seeing real soldiers.” He pats him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. This'll all be over before you know it.”

After a fraught moment, Dean nods.

He drops back and watches his father, feeling some peculiar dread ping every battle instinct he possesses.

“Well?” Sam asks.

“Something’s wrong.”

Tension immediately floods Sam’s face and he glances forward to where John is being greeted at an open door. Over the shape of his hand shaking a captain’s, Dean can see a room full of people in business attire sitting around a table.

Sam asks, “Why? What did he say?”

Dean can’t take his eyes off John. “He told me not to worry.”

—

There are half a dozen Ravenwood soldiers in the room, but they stare straight ahead when they enter. The suits, however, watch with open curiosity and even amusement as Dean and the rest of his team line up along the wall beside the door.

The man at the end of the table doesn’t so much as glance at them.

Dean feels Sam stiffen next to him. He wants to demand an explanation, but they'll no longer get away with whispering, not with all the attention on them. So he falls back on an old trick they used as kids, back when John would tire of hearing them bicker and demand complete silence in the car.

Letting his arms drop casually to his sides, he uses a knuckle to tap out Morse code on Sam’s forearm: _what?_

Sam, being Sam, doesn’t need so much as a second to remember the code, even though he surely hasn’t had call to use it in almost a decade. Sometime around the age of sixteen he’d started recoiling every time Dean reached out.

Sam responds, _m_ _an from vision._

Dean looks at the man with renewed interest. He’s middle-aged, but in the neat, impossible-to-pin-down way of rich men. His posture proclaims an easy dominance over the rest of the table.

Dean tries to remember what Sam had said about the vision, but it had all been so vague.

“I see Ravenwood accepted your terms,” John says. He stands at the opposite end of the table. Everything about him is in contrast to the suits, from his dusty field uniform to the bloody scrapes decorating his muscled arms.

The sitting man gives a shark’s smile. “It all went down with a little more hostility than intended, but Richard Roman Enterprises now owns a majority of the shares in Ravenwood Security. I imagine it'll make the front page in tomorrow’s news.”

What the fuck is going on, Dean thinks.

Sam is tapping out another message. _Dick Roman. Don’t know how I didn’t recognize him before._

The name means nothing to Dean, who has always lived on the edges of society, and has also been somewhat preoccupied fighting a war for the past several years.

“Let’s get down to it, then,” John says. “You have what I want?”

Roman holds up a hand. “Please. Considering who you are, I think I need some assurances before we move forward.”

John considers him for a moment, as if trying to decide how much leeway he is prepared to give. “You need three?”

Dean’s eyes dart between John and Roman.

“Three, yes.”

“Alright.” John pulls out his service pistol and, before Dean can so much as flinch, shoots Kite in the head.

“Hold it!” The Ravenwood men bring their guns up and train them on Dean’s team, all of whom had moved for their own weapons. Not Dean, though. He stares dumbly at John, hands empty and useless at his sides.

Sam’s breathing is fast and panicky next to him. “Dad, what the fuck is happening?”

“That’s not Dad,” Dean says. It’s the only thing he can say or think as the blood spreads out around where Kite’s body has fallen.

The thing wearing his father’s face calmly holsters the gun. “Bit slow on the uptake as usual, Deano. Imagine knowing your own father so little that you could be with him for almost a week and not figure out he’s possessed.”

It smiles, and its eyes kindle yellow.

Dean hears Sam choke on a curse.

The demon turns back to Roman. The table of suits all look a little pale, but not surprised. They knew this was coming.

“I need the tall one, but you can have the other three. They should do you well for the spell.”

“What spell?” Sam demands.

Roman is clearly the type who loves to explain his own genius, because he actually answers. “This is all about contingency plans. Mr. Azazel here wants the Colt; my shareholders and I want protection.”

“And you trust a demon to keep its end of a bargain?”

“Of course not,” Roman says, a little puzzled, like Sam is being slow. “That’s what the spell is for. The deaths of your three companions will be the key ingredient.”

“Don’t you feel any guilt?” Hawthorne says, face white. “For selling out the human race?”

“Hunters.” Roman shakes his head. “You people never really got it, but I saw the truth almost immediately. There is no way of winning here, because this isn’t a _war_. Never was.”

Dean's voice sounds distant to his own ears. “How dumb of us, out there fighting and bleeding and dying when apparently there's no war.”

Roman's response is almost gentle. “This is a takeover. And in a takeover, the first step is always to secure your position moving forward. Clinging to the old management out of some misguided sense of loyalty will only ensure your own obsolescence.” He gestures at them. “As you're about to experience, I'm afraid.”

—

Their hands get tied together and then they are marched by gunpoint out to another yard. A warding circle has been painted in the center of the cement. He doesn’t recognize the script, which means it’s probably old as fuck.

Sam is tugged aside and made to stand next to the demon. His hands are tied behind his back, and he watches with wide, burning eyes as Dean and the others are shoved into the circle.

Dean doesn’t feel any different, which probably means the ward hasn’t been activated yet. He figures that’s about to change as a private starts lighting the two dozen candles ringing it.

“Sarge,” Hawthorne whispers. “How do we get out of this?”

Dean doesn’t have an answer for her. He is still staring at the demon.

“What are you going to do to Sam?” He asks.

“I’ve got plans for him. Sam’s a very special boy. Or hasn’t he told you about that?”

Dean doesn't say anything to that, just lets the demon think what he will.

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” the demon muses. “After all, there are a lot of things he hasn’t told you.”

Sam looks away from Dean to throw the demon a sharp glance.

Dean doesn’t want to hear anything the demon has to say, but he needs to keep it talking, needs to stall for time until he can think of a plan.

“Like what?” He asks, trying to sound like he actually gives a shit. He watches Sam go pale and thinks _sorry, Sam_. But he figures his brother’s got to know there’s nothing the demon could say that will change how Dean feels.

The demon cocks John’s head and watches him with glittering eyes. “Don’t you know?”

“ _Wait_ — ” Sam says.

“Your brother wants you. Biblically.” The demon laughs. “And I am very much talking in the Old Testament, nasty blood-on-blood sort of way.”

Sam opens and closes his mouth in shock. He looks like he’s going to be sick.

Dean doesn’t feel anything but numb. Of everything the demon might have said, he never expected something like that. Hearing those words come out of his father's mouth – in his father's _voice_ – renders them almost nonsensical.

Hawthorne is muttering under breath, “What the _fuck_? _What_ the _fuck_.”

And the other hunter, the replacement whose name Dean never bothered to learn, finally starts to lose his cool. “This can’t be happening,” he says, breathing going wild. “This isn’t happening.”

Roman joins them in the yard, looking satisfied when he spots the three of them in the spell circle. In one hand he is holding a dark, polished wood box. In the other — the Colt. It has to be it. The long barrel, the old design. The way the demon immediately zeroes in on it.

Roman runs a hand over the gun. “Soon as the spell’s initiated, it’s all yours.”

Azazel’s smile shows off John's teeth. “It’s cute that you think I can’t just snap your neck with a twitch of my fingers and take it off you right now. Bargain be damned.” He laughs as Roman’s face drops. “I’m not going to kill you, of course. I’m a demon of my word. But I will just — ”

He lifts a hand and the gun flies through the air like he’s holding a magnet. It slaps into his hand and he smiles around the yard, saving Dean for last and holding his gaze. “It’s been a pleasure. But I’ll be going now. Appointments to attend, apocalypses to manage. You know how it is.”

Azazel turns to go, hand rough on the back of Sam's neck like one would collar an unruly dog. Sam struggles every step, throwing a wide-eyed, desperate look back at the three of them.

“Dean!”

 _Sam_ , Dean tries to say, but his voice doesn't seem to be working. His lips shape the word silently.

He stares across the distance at all he has left in the world and thinks _it can't end this way_. Dean's never been a person of faith, never thought any of this was ever going to end any way but bloody. But now that he's finally facing the inevitable, he rejects it.

Just before reaching the door to the yard, Sam throws himself backwards with all he's got. And Dean doesn't understand what happens next – Sam hits the ground and as he does, the flames in the candles shoot high, impossibly high like the wicks have been transformed into geysers. It startles the private backward and attracts the attention of everyone in the yard.

The moment of distraction is all they need.

Hawthorne kicks the knee out of the nearest guard and then gives him a boot to the face as he goes down.

Dean dislocates his thumb to free his hand from his bindings and then grabs up the fallen guard's gun and shoots him. He nails the other guard and then the private and the bodies fall easier than any freak's, one-two-three dead in just as many seconds.

They sprint behind a vehicle for cover, even as bullets eat at their heels.

“We need them alive,” Roman yells out to his own men. The brief glimpse Dean gets over the hood of the truck is of a man wholly unprepared for the reality of a battle, a shark turned shrinking violet. If he had the time, Dean'd enjoy the image.

“What's the plan?” Hawthorne asks over the gunfire.

“Kill every motherfucker you see,” Dean shouts back. He brings his gun up and doesn't let it drop again.

Their vantage point behind the truck doesn't allow him to see Sam or the demon, and with every second his need to put eyes on them grows.

“I need to get to Sam,” he tells Hawthorne.

She only glances at him for a moment, but it's long enough for him to see the sudden distrust shadow her eyes. Once, he might have cared about that. But his brother and father are in trouble and that's the only thing that matters.

“You'll never make it across the yard,” is all she says.

“Uh, guys?”

The third hunter didn't manage to grab a gun before they took cover, and so Dean almost forgot he was there. He and Hawthorne turn to look at him now, attention caught by the strange near-glee in his voice.

The hunter hefts a crate. “Look what was in the truck.”

They don't have time for cutesy reveals. Dean impatiently rips the cover off the crate.

And then he and Hawthorne stare down at the neat rows of grenades.

That's the thing about private security, Dean thinks. They're sloppy as fuck with supplies. Dean looks back up at Hawthorne, whose mouth is starting to curl in what promises to be a ferocious smile.

“I think I know how we're going to get out of here.”

–

Hawthorne's got one hell of an arm, made it to the national softball championships at the age of fifteen and would have probably gone to college on a scholarship if it hadn't been for the war. So the assembled Ravenwood soldiers are unprepared for when she starts lobbing the grenades with machine-grade accuracy and timing.

First one goes right into the thick of the Ravenwood ranks to take out as many soldiers as possible before they realize they've got the grenades. Second goes to a stack of pallets to get some fire going and give them some smoke cover. Third goes to the spell circle, because Hawthorne is the kind of woman who holds a grudge.

The smoke starts to fill the yard, burning Dean's eyes and lungs. He's not going to have better odds than right now.

He throws himself around the truck, firing into the smoke. Gives little thought to the bullets flying in his direction, head full only of _gotta get to Sammy_ _, gotta get that thing outta Dad._

He isn't expecting Sam to have extracted himself from the demon's grasp or to meet him halfway across the yard.

His face is a mask of blood, he's holding his shoulder awkwardly, but he's somehow managed to get himself a gun.

“Dean, thank god.” Relief floods his face. “We have to get out of here.”

Dean nods and keeps moving forward. “Yeah, after we get Dad.”

Strong hands claw at his shoulders, scrabbling for purchase and pulling. “No – Dean, you don't understand! We have to _go_ — ”

One of Hawthorne's grenades lands a little too close to their position, and the explosion sends them both rocking back on their feet. Dean shakes his head as if that will clear the ringing in his ears.

“I’m not leaving him,” he shouts over the noise, and tries to step around Sam.

But he hauls Dean around again, and his eyes are wide and desperate. “There's no choice here. There’s nothing we can do for him right now.”

And Dean can’t. He can’t listen to this. His dad is just across the yard, and he’s trapped. Possessed by the same twisted fucking thing that killed mom —

Dean rips himself away from Sam and lunges forward through the smoke-filled air once more.

“Damn it — _Dean_!”

He makes it two steps before Sam hauls him round again. This time he doesn’t argue with Dean. He just knocks him out with the butt of his gun.

—

Dean never forgives Sam for doing it, not to his dying day.

 


	18. Epilogue

 

“... _Southbound 85, closed; Route 82, closed; I-280 eastbound, four hour delays; I-280 westbound, two hour delays; Highway 101, three lanes blocked by debris; I-5 northbound, four hour delays; I-5 southbound, reports of supernatural activity, avoid…”_

 

Dean opens his eyes to the cramped and dark interior of a car.

He takes in the curve of the roof, the stereo, the noise of the engine and height off the road and his brain returns _sedan, mid-90s, Honda or Toyota_. He feels the car roll for another a few seconds and tacks on an addendum: _shocks gone to shit._

Less easy is cataloging his own status. A dull ache occupies his head, and he can tell by the way his right eye doesn’t want to open all the way that he must have one hell of a shiner. All his teeth are still intact. His throat is parched and his lungs burn slightly. Likely smoke inhalation. His limbs appear to be more or less functional.

His dad is as good as dead.

“Where are we?” he asks. Voice hoarse.

He watches Sam’s knuckles strain toward re-splitting fresh clots as they tighten on the steering wheel.

Sam clears his throat and turns down the radio’s grim recital of road conditions. “About half an hour outside of Visalia.”

Dean thinks. It’s more difficult than it should be. “...That south?”

“Yes.”

Dean grits his teeth. “Why we headed south, Sam?”

Sam’s voice tenses to match his own. “We can’t go back to base.” And then, before Dean can demand an explanation, he says quickly, “It’s gone, Dean. Whole city was overrun. Hunt Command’s giving ground, pulling out of the Central Valley entirely. Last transmission I received, they’re going to reconnoiter in the Bay area, just east of Oakland.”

Dean takes a second to absorb the news. It’s not the first hot zone he’s seen go FUBAR, but the shock of such a comprehensive failure is never easy to handle. He wonders how many people they lost. He thinks of Connolly, Gene, the Abilene woman who'd wished him luck just that morning.

He looks over. “And the rendezvous point? Why aren’t we meeting up with the others?”

He immediately knows something (something _else_ ) is terribly wrong because Sam lets out a long breath and starts to pull the car over to the shoulder of the road.

Dean narrows his eyes. “What is it?”

Sam says carefully, “Command knows about Dad. And Hawthorne and Carson saw what I did getting out of Mountain View. They think I’m working for the demon.”

Dean goes cold.

He finally looks at his brother. He doesn’t like what he sees, and it’s not because Sam’s beat to hell — it’s fucked up, but Dean’s gotten used to seeing his face covered in bruises and cuts. What he can’t handle is the naked fear in his eyes. He wants to ask what he did to get them out of the Ravenwood camp, but he thinks the question will need to wait.

“So we’ll explain,” he says carefully. “We’ll just — what are you doing?”

Sam is reaching down between the seats. He comes up with a battered radio set from one of the Jeeps and switches it on, then sits back and watches Dean’s face as he listens to the looping transmission.

“‘Dead or alive’?” He stares at Sam, vision swimming. “They already put a hit out?”

“By 0600 tomorrow, everyone on the western front’s gonna be looking for me.”

Dean clenches his jaw. “You mean looking for _us_.”

Sam isn't comforted by this display of loyalty, just looks tired and kind of pitiful. “You sure?” His mouth twists and he starts in on the pointless platitudes. “Look, Dean. About Dad. I’m. I’m sorry — ”

“Shut up,” Dean says.

But Sam never obeys. “If we’d stayed there, we woulda died too, and then there’d be no one to help him. I couldn’t see any other way.”

 _It wasn’t just your decision to make._ Dean lets the words sit cold and hard just behind his teeth.

Sam watches him carefully. “You know section command would take you back, if you showed up at the rendezvous point. Without me, I mean.”

The words don’t even make sense. “The fuck you talking about?”

Sam forces the words out. “Everyone knows you’re loyal, they’d give you a pass. I mean, you’d probably have to undergo a battery of clearance tests, but — ”

“Sam.” Dean waits until he is looking into his eyes before he says succinctly, “Don’t be stupid. Now switch with me, I wanna drive.”

“No.”

Dean’s never been refused the wheel before. He twists back around. “Excuse me?”

Sam’s face is set in its familiar stubborn lines, but his eyes are still jumpy. Nervous, like he’s going to force some issue that even he doesn’t want to discuss.

“I’m not going to let you fuck your entire life up just so you can follow Dad’s orders about looking after me — ”

“ _Fuck_ _you_ ,” Dean snarls.

“ — especially after what the demon told you,” Sam finishes, voice wavering between _checkmate_ and palpable nausea.

It takes a second for Dean to even realize what he's talking about. He hasn't been able to think about it. Compared to what went down in the Ravenwood compound with Dad, it doesn’t even register. _Don’t you know? Your brother wants you_.

It can’t be true, not when he’s pretty sure Sam hasn’t really wanted him around once in his entire life. It can’t be real.

Except the way Sam is looking at him like he’s facing down a rifle squad says otherwise. He looks more scared, _now_ , trying to get Dean to leave him, than he did the entire time he was talking about the USHC hunting him down like a freak.

They stare at each other in the darkness of the car. Dean watches Sam’s throat work in the dim lighting of the dash and feels strangely detached.

“Listen to me,” he says finally. Sam straightens, obviously steeling himself. “If you have even an ounce of respect for me rattling around in that head of yours — as your older brother, as your NCO, whatever — you’ll drop this. Stop questioning my decision. And just let me drive the fucking car, Sam.”

Sam is still for another second and then his shoulders sag all at once. He bows his head and nods silently.

They throw open their respective doors and climb out into the cool night air. Dean takes a deep breath. Facing the dark expanse of empty desert next to the road, he allows his face to collapse and contort for just a second.

Jesus _fuck_.

When he turns and rounds the car, his expression is wiped clean again.

They both climb back inside and shut the doors against the night. Dean adjusts to the feel of the piece of shit car. In the light of the dashboard, he notices his clothing for the first time.

“What the hell am I wearing?” He smooths his hands down his chest. As some point while he was unconscious, Sam wrangled him into a pair of jeans and a bright blue and yellow hooded sweatshirt. He looks ridiculous. He squints at the upside down lettering and makes out _Spartans_.

“Our uniforms were too conspicuous,” Sam says. “Had to ditch them.”

“Right,” Dean says. He shrugs, uncomfortable. He hasn’t worn civvies outside of an undercover op in _years_. If it weren’t for the tags he could still feel against his sternum, he’d feel almost naked. “Great,” he adds, just for good measure.

He starts the car and squints down the dark two-lane road.

“Where were you headed, anyway? Keep on this much longer, we’re going to hit full desert.”

“I don’t know,” Sam says honestly. “I was kind of just driving to get away. Thought maybe about going to see Uncle Bobby. I mean, we need to find someplace we can lay low while we figure out how to track the demon down, and there’s no love lost between him and the USHC.”

Dean allows himself to think about it, for just one moment. He hasn’t seen Bobby in years. He wonders if the man would even recognize him anymore.

“We’re at square one with the demon. Worse than square one. It’s holding all the cards.” _And Dad_.

“Well. Not all,” Sam says, voice kind of stilted and strange.

Dean glances at him sharply. “Something you forget to mention, Sammy?”

Sam pauses, blinking at him, before he grins. It’s a small one, and more relieved than happy, but that changes when he flips opened the glove compartment and palms the object inside.

Even in the dark, Dean recognizes the long gleaming lines of the Colt.

“I snatched it when the grenades started flying,” Sam says, as Dean stares. “It’s the other reason I decided to drive as fast and far away from everything as I could.”

His heart and body are bruised all to hell, but Dean could never resist his brother showing off his smarts. He doesn’t say anything, just thumps him on the arm and turns back to the wheel with a tired smirk.

Sam puts the Colt away and settles into the passenger seat, angling his body so it can fit in the preposterous space. “So, what do you think? Bobby’s?”

“Yeah we can try him. But we gotta swing by Louisiana first.” Dean collects himself and starts the engine. He checks his mirrors and eases the car back off the shouler. The world becomes boxed in by the familiar yellow and white lines of the road, and his nerves immediately begin to settle.

“Louisiana?” Sam repeats blankly. “What’s in Louisiana?”

Dean looks over at him. His brother has his shoulders angled against the door so he can watch Dean drive. He’s wearing a truly stupid yellow shirt that looks like it came from the same store as Dean’s sweatshirt.

For a moment it feels completely normal, like how it was back before either of them enlisted. Just two brothers on the road. Only one thing missing.

“I’m going to get my fucking car,” Dean says, and guns that sad little motor forward into the next morning.


End file.
